Water-horse
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: Professor Snape attempts to create an antidote to the Imperius Curse against Dumbledore's express orders to the contrary, and discovers that the blood of a water-horse is a very dangerous Potions ingredient. Set during Book 2 and featuring Snape and McGonagall, plus cameos by Professor Dumbledore, Mad-Eye Moody and Harry Potter himself... Rated T for psychological horror/angst.
1. Special Consignment

**A/N: **This story deals with the older students at Hogwarts; Harry Potter's year-group barely feature in it at all. Readers should also be warned that no love-interest is provided for any of the characters!

(NB: This story was originally written before the last three "Harry Potter" books were published - in consequence, some of the backstory now definitely takes place in an Alternative Universe as it is not consistent with the final book!)

* * *

"I am here," began Lachlan MacMartin with great unwillingness, "because there is something in the loch which may bring you ill-fortune, and—"

"In the loch! What, an _each uisge_, a water-horse?" Ewen was smiling. "You cannot shoot a water-horse, Lachlan — not with a charge of small-shot!"

**The Flight of the Heron**, D. (1925)

_Each uisge_ (Gaelic — 'water-horse'): subspecies of _kelpie_ (q.v.) related to the _night-horse_ (ref. Cherryh, p27 and passim). The blood, tail-hairs (when in horse form) and tongue all have applications in various fields of potion-making and particularly in mind control... Wizards should note that this creature is classified as a Level 6 predator (see Appendix VIII) and may only be obtained under specific licence.

**Hoof, Horn & Bone — the Potion Maker's Guide to Body Parts**, Vol 2 (Heidelburg Press 1991)

* * *

****Ch.1— Special Consignment****

"Professor Snape?"

The Potions master, marking students' work in a pool of lamplight, failed to look up. His mouth was drawn into a thin line. The fifth year Slytherin class was one of the weakest in the House, and despite impending O.W.L.s, young Tench's Potions work had continued to be poor enough to drag the entire House average down five points. Snape's lips thinned further as he scanned the remainder of the essay, his quill underscoring omissions, inaccuracies and misspellings with jabs of vivid scarlet. Three inches from the end of the scroll, a large and hopeful blot had obliterated half a paragraph of the conclusion.

Snape studied this phenomenon, nostrils flaring unpleasantly once more, and after _'Shoddy work'_ appended a single, slashing _'T'_, and the grim phrase_'See me'_. From the far end of the dungeon classroom he caught the intake of breath as the girl nerved herself to speak again.

"Yes, Miss Franklin?" Snape said sharply, not bothering to glance in her direction. His peripheral night vision had always been excellent.

Ava Franklin, fourth-year Hufflepuff, emitted the predictable suppressed squeak of dismay that had never once, since her first Potions lesson, failed to irritate him. She was hovering nervously in the doorway as if she thought he might be about to stab her with his quill. "Sir — please, sir—"

"Yes, Miss Franklin?" Snape allowed the scroll to snap shut and fixed her with cold black eyes. No coherent explanation appeared to be forthcoming. "I assume you **do** have some reason for disturbing me at this hour?"

Ava gulped. "Sir — Professor McGonagall—"

Under his glare, she took visible hold on her message and recited: "Professor McGonagall's compliments, and would Professor Snape please, umm, remove his Potions consignment from the entrance hall where it is causing an obstruction."

Snape sighed and laid down his quill automatically, preparing to get up and inspect the contents of this new delivery. He disliked being interrupted in the middle of marking, particularly when it was going badly, but a Potions consignment was always an event and the prospect of fresh ingredients was a not unwelcome one.

Then his gaze fell on Ava, and he picked up his quill again, his eyes glinting slightly in anticipation. "You may go, Miss Franklin. My compliments to Professor McGonagall, and you may tell her I'll be along presently."

He reached out one hand for the next scroll and unrolled it with deliberation, watching the changing expressions on Ava's face with some enjoyment. It was fifteen years since he'd last found himself in terror of the sharp side of McGonagall's tongue, but the prospect clearly had the fourth-year appalled. Snape's thin, unpleasant smile dawned.

"I believe I told you to leave, Miss Franklin. **Out**!"

* * *

Some forty-five minutes later, his marking completed and liberally endorsed with red ink, he encountered Minerva McGonagall, looking thunderous, in the entrance hall.

"Professor Snape, I distinctly seem to remember requesting—" The faint Scots intonation in her voice, always a sign of agitation, had become considerably stronger.

"I was busy," Snape said coldly, cutting across her. Minerva's scoldings were only one of the various unpleasant situations he had hardened himself to ignore, over the years.

Removing the dog-eared parchment tacked to the lid of the largest box, he surveyed the collection of crates and packing-cases, ticking off the various items one by one first on his mental list and then on the delivery note in his hand. _Lion whelk_ — tick. _Shredded mares' nest_ — tick. _Angusberries, dried; carragheen, dried; distilled lamprey oil_ — tick, tick, tick.

The list was twitched from under his nose. "The items are all there," Professor McGonagall said, her mouth a tight-pressed line. "If there is one thing I have had, it is time to check."

Snape's lip curled slightly, as if in disbelief. "**All** there?"

Their eyes met. Her level gaze held his for a moment, then indicated one of the larger packing-cases. She gave a brief nod in that direction. "**All** there."

Despite himself, Snape couldn't hide a touch of relief, mirrored almost instantly in the relaxing of Professor McGonagall's taut-braced shoulders. It was not the 'obstruction' in the wide hall — not at nine o'clock at night! — that had left her temper on edge; and it was not the Deputy Headmistress' habit to monitor every delivery in person. Nor, for that matter, was it entirely the envisioned disaster of his O.W.L.-year Slytherins that had worn his own patience thin, these last few weeks, nor even the antics of a certain set of second-year Gryffindors. The presence or absence, however, of the one item in this consignment that was **not** on the list — that one very dangerous and extremely illegal item that had only been included on Professor McGonagall's personal authority — had had a great deal to do with it. Not least, the fact that neither of them had as yet informed Professor Dumbledore.

"And that cat Mrs Norris was nosing around earlier," Professor McGonagall was saying shortly as she led the way to the extra packing-case. "**How** you expect me to—"

"I dare say she would be," Snape cut across smoothly. If he was also regretting the momentary satisfaction derived from the impulse to keep her waiting, then he had no intention of showing it.

He inhaled sharply, analysing the most pungent constituent parts of the aroma from long practice. "The lamprey oil, unless I'm much mistaken." Automatically, he had cast a glance around for Filch; but neither the caretaker nor his cat familiar were anywhere in sight.

McGonagall's pursed lips suggested that she didn't believe anything so innocent of Mrs Norris for a minute. But she reached the packing-case in question and indicated it with a tap of her wand. Something moved inside, and instinctively both of them took a half-step back.

"_Each uisge,_" Professor McGonagall said, a little hoarsely, touching the crate more cautiously with the very tip of her wand, so that the seals on the strappings glowed into visibility. "One. Adult. Male, so far as we can tell. And you can thank your lucky stars, Severus, that we're north of the border— " the trace of Scots was making another appearance in her agitation— "for I would not have tried to bring that down south without a permit, not with Grindelwald himself on my heels."

Snape was inspecting the seals, peering between the slats at the dark shape shifting within. An eye rolled at him, dark with a crimson streak, and he caught a glimpse of black silky hide. The creature was no larger than a dog.

"I specifically asked for an adult." His tone was sharp. "Even a common kelpie should be larger than this—"

McGonagall shook her head. "Containment Curse," she explained. "Believe me, they don't build bespelled crates big enough to hold an _each uisge _without."

She directed her wand towards the crate's interior. "_Visio Encapsulatum!_"

Despite himself, Snape stepped hastily aside as the ghostly image of a sixteen-hand stallion sprang into being above the crate, night-black hide rippling over muscles in very un-horse-like places. Its glossy hooves were cloven, and looked razor-sharp, and the mouth that turned and hissed at them bore a double row of predatory teeth and a forked and delicate sandpaper tongue. The _each uisge_ laid back its ears and snapped. The nearest eye held a glint of red intelligence in its depths.

Professor McGonagall, looking shaken, banished the image with a flick of her wand, and exchanged glances with Snape. "I trust the spells on that enclosure Professor Kettleburn has been constructing will prove adequate."

"So, Minerva," said Snape drily, "do I." The gruesome contents of the shelves in his office had never disturbed his sleep one whit. Strangely enough, however, the prospect of having this creature caged within the same set of rooms as his bedchamber seemed far from conducive to slumber.

"At all costs," McGonagall was saying fervently, "we must keep it out of the lake."

Snape's lip curled slightly. He had never suspected Professor McGonagall of a talent for the blindingly obvious. "No, somehow I don't imagine the news that we had an escaped man-eating water-horse on the grounds would enhance our student intake..."

Professor McGonagall treated this last sally with all the attention it deserved; namely none. Confronted with the reality of the _each uisge_, his colleague had begun to look rather sick. "Severus, are you sure this is necessary?"

Snape stiffened. "In my professional judgement, the fresh heart's-blood of an _each uisge_ is essential to the functioning of the mixture, yes. If you are asking me to judge the desirability of developing a Free-will Potion, that would depend entirely upon your assessment of the likelihood of the return of Voldemort — and your assessment of the undesirability of that event—" He broke off abruptly, shutting off the memories before they could rise.

McGonagall was shaking her head helplessly, perhaps trying to drive out her own memories of those dark days. "We **have** to have something to use against the Imperius Curse." Her knuckles tightened around her wand. "It was bad enough last time. To go through that again— There **has** to be something we can use to protect against the effects!"

"I'm convinced a Free-will Potion is possible." Snape kept his own voice soft with an effort. Bitterness stained his words. "Under which circumstances it is unfortunate, to say the least, that the Headmaster has seen fit to refuse permission for any further research."

"The risks—"

"The risks are my affair."

"The risks to the school—"

"The only risks to the school would be in the case of my gross incompetence," Snape said coldly, and McGonagall sighed.

"Well, it's no secret Albus Dumbledore and I didn't see quite eye to eye on this one." The corners of the Deputy Headmistress' mouth twitched slightly as she surveyed the assortment of potent and highly exotic commodities she had taken steps to acquire, all of which Snape had listed as equally essential to practical development. Then her lips thinned once more to a straight line as her gaze returned to the caged _each uisge_. "How long before you can demonstrate a result that may change Albus' mind?"

Snape didn't miss a beat. "Three to five days—" he'd worked it out often enough, calculating theory, allowing for experimental error — "five, at the outside."

"Before— ?"

His smile was less than pleasant. "Before I can produce a result that warrants asking permission to carry out full tests with the Imperius Curse, of course. Or did you seriously imagine that it would be possible to perform a series of Unforgivable Curses in the dungeons at Hogwarts without ringing alarms everywhere from the Headmaster's office to the Ministry of Magic?"

McGonagall pointedly ignored that.

"And—" she frowned, her eyes still on the half-seen movements of the _each uisge_ — "just where do you plan to send that thing after your work is over? There's no water near here will be safe—"

"Send it?" Snape stared at her, then laughed, briefly. "Minerva, I specified **fresh** heart's-blood. We will have exactly one chance at this. As far as that creature is concerned, there isn't going to be an 'afterwards'."

He caught the expression that crossed her face, and his lip curled. "Come now, Professor, I'd have thought you'd have been the last person to feel sentiment over an _each uisge_ — after what happened to your sister."

Professor McGonagall had gone very white. She was staring at him. "How did you know?" she whispered. "How could you know...about Catriona?"

"It's amazing what you come across in the course of basic research." Snape smiled, sourly. "There haven't been many kelpie attacks this century. The name caught my attention...and it wasn't hard to put two and two together."

For a moment the hall was silent, save for the liquid shifting of the caged creature, barely a wand's-length away. "She would have been your elder sister, I think?" Snape prompted in a low tone, raising an eyebrow.

Professor McGonagall's lips were pressed very tightly together, and she had her head turned away to the far side of the hall. She said nothing. After a few seconds she nodded, slowly.

"For what it's worth," Snape said stiffly at last into the long silence that followed, the unaccustomed words hard to force out, "you have my — condolences."

Professor McGonagall turned and smiled at him suddenly, her face resolutely bright. "Oh, it was a long time ago, Severus. A very long time."

She shook herself briskly. "You'll be wanting an assistant, I take it?"

Snape, momentarily taken aback, pulled himself together. "An assistant — at least for the initial preparations, yes. One of the older students will do. The sixth-years have barely started their N.E.W.T.s; they can easily spare an evening or two."

"Sixth-year Slytherin," McGonagall nodded. "Well, that can be arranged—"

"**Not** Slytherin," Snape snapped. "I don't want Slytherin House implicated in this. Neither your House nor mine — we may need an independent witness."

Fresh lines had appeared on Professor McGonagall's face, but she conceded the point unhappily. "Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, then. Emma Currion's a very talented student...I'm sure—"

"I don't care how talented she is at Transfiguration, I'm not having a hamfisted Hufflepuff near an experiment of this delicacy," Snape said flatly across her protests. He cast his mind across last year's Ravenclaw Potions class, trying to separate the competent students from the troublemakers. "Lovell will do. I'll take Lovell."

"Magnus Lovell?" McGonagall looked surprised. "Don't you think he's a bit...quiet?"

"The quieter the better," Snape retorted. He had drawn his wand and was busy levitating packages into a neat queue towards the stairs.

Professor McGonagall sighed, drawing her robes around her as she prepared to leave. "Very well. I'll have Lovell sent down here. Is there anything else?"

"I'll keep you informed." Snape didn't spare her a glance, concentrating on handling three bales of larks-tongues at once. After a moment he heard the quick rustle of retreating steps, followed by silence.


	2. First Blood

**Ch.2 — First Blood**

Reserved and gypsy-dark, Magnus Lovell, now in his sixth year in Ravenclaw House at Hogwarts, had always been tall for his age. Over the last year he had finally begun to broaden out to match his gangly height. During the summer, Snape noted with distaste, he had also taken the daring step of acquiring a single gold earring. Some feather-witted girl had probably told him that it made him look piratical and dashing. To Snape's mind it made him look more like a Muggle garage mechanic.

He stared coldly at Lovell until the boy looked down and began to shuffle. "If you've quite finished inspecting the hem of your robes, Mr Lovell..." Snape's voice was silky, but Magnus flushed.

"Professor McGonagall said you needed some stuff moving down to the dungeons, sir."

"Yes." **Obviously**, Snape's expression implied. He indicated the crate that held the _each uisge_ with a brief jerk of his wand. "This one contains livestock. I suggest that you handle it with extreme care."

Another flick of his wand rounded up the levitating small packages and sent them bobbing ahead of him towards the stairs down to the lower levels of Hogwarts. He was halfway across the hall when a yelp and crash from behind him told him that the boy Lovell had managed to drop the packing-case.

He swung round on his heel, snarling. "I believe I mentioned **extreme care**, Mr Lovell?"

The seals on the case were unharmed, but Lovell's hand was bleeding. The denizen of the cage had obviously managed to get in a bite. Snape relaxed and allowed himself a thin smile.

"I suggest more attention in future when handling hazardous materials," he told the boy coldly, watching him take a fresh grip on his burden, and swept his own load out of the hall and down the stairs.

He passed Lovell several times as the pile of packages in the entrance hall steadily decreased. The Ravenclaw appeared to be making extremely slow progress. As Snape came swiftly up the stairs for a third time, the boy stumbled, missed a step, and almost brought them both crashing to the ground. A wicked black head, flattened against the inside of the crate, twisted round and tried to get in a nip at Snape in passing, only to recoil before a venomous hex.

Snape brushed off his robes, regained his balance and directed a truly murderous glare at the incompetent Lovell. The boy was almost in tears. He made another attempt to lift the packing-case, flinching with pain, and let it slip, holding out both hands in appeal. They were covered with shallow nips and scrapes and bleeding freely. "Sir — I can't—"

"Silence!" Snape stared him down. "I would have expected more initiative from a Ravenclaw of your abilities, Mr Lovell." An almost contemptuous flick of his wand set a Repulsion hex along the edges of the slats, bringing a harsh hiss from the dark shape within. He pointed his wand in the direction of Lovell's hands.

"_Torpeo!_"

Lovell let out a gasp as the Numbing Curse hit, then stared down at his nerveless extremities in mingled relief and dismay. He fumbled to pick up the crate with some difficulty.

"Get on with it." Snape turned away sharply. "I'll expect you to bring down what's left from the Entrance Hall once you've finished. I have work to do."

But he took care to supervise the creature's transfer to Professor Kettleburn's enclosure himself, all the same, forcing the horse-demon across from travelling-crate to sturdy cage without allowing for one moment the Containment Curse to lapse that held it pent in miniature form. It was not until the Curse had been firmly anchored in its new destination, and the protections on every bar of the enclosure checked over yet again — he had absolutely no intention of trusting his own safety to them on the strength of old Kettleburn's assurances — that he dismissed Lovell to fetch down the remainder of the supplies and allowed himself to relax a little.

In the corner of the disused classroom, the _each uisge_ shifted softly, one dark eye half-visible in the shadows. It whickered gently, projecting 'harmless' and 'glossy black hide, so soft to touch'. Snape gave it a cold stare and turned his back.

But the process of opening and unpacking all the various bales and crates of newly-arrived components intrigued him and calmed his temper, as it always had; there was an unthinking pleasure in breaking open each bundle and spreading out the delicate contents across the long desks in the lamplight, in a subtle rainbow of textures and colours and scents, musty and spicy and sour, with a hint of sharp musk, and the faint, unpleasant background tang that was the relic of a hundred failed schoolboy potions. It had hung about all the dungeon classrooms for so long that he barely even registered it with distaste; it was simply the familiar scent of Potions...of his domain.

He was in the middle of examining a carefully-graded array of lionfish spines when Magnus Lovell made a belated reappearance, almost concealed behind an armful of the remaining packages.

"There's still another couple of boxes up there," he said hastily, before Snape could speak. He let his armful cascade clumsily onto the end of the table beside the rest. "I couldn't manage everything all at once. I'll just go and get them—" He almost bolted from the room.

Snape stared after him, breath hissing sharply between his teeth. But the boy's feet were clattering up the stairs already, and young Master Lovell's antics could be tracked down to source later. Meanwhile...meanwhile, there was the intriguing, bitter scent of crushed mermaid's-foot seed drifting from the half-opened packet in front of him, and a whole cornucopia of other treasures to be brought to light...

It was some few minutes later, handling feather-light sheets of gossamer silk, that he became aware of an unpleasant stickiness in his touch. Snape wiped one hand down the black of his robes, irritably. Then frowned, staring at the colour of the faint smudges on the gossamer. Brought the other hand up slowly, first into the lamplight and then, cautiously — gaze going from the reddish smears on his fingertips to those on the side of the bale he'd been handling — to his mouth.

The fleeting taste was only a confirmation. Blood-stains. Hand-prints, on everything the boy had brought down. And the boy himself, standing in the doorway with the two last boxes clutched to his chest, and a thoroughly hangdog expression...

"Mr Lovell!" Snape was on his feet, robes billowing around him as if the shadows themselves were reaching out, and Lovell flinched.

"Have you any idea—" the Potions master's voice had taken on that deadly intensity that his students knew all too well— "have you any idea of the potential consequences, not only to yourself but to anyone careless enough to use the contaminated material, if this wizard's blood of yours is allowed to come into contact with work in progress? Have you any hint of understanding of the Dark Arts implications alone of mingling a wizard's own blood with a spell?"

He drew a breath. "Because strangely enough, Mr Lovell, I seem to remember setting an essay on that very subject for your Potions exam — an examination which you purport to have passed with an ease which now appears entirely improbable!"

Snape broke off. Not, by any means, because words were about to fail him, but because the young Ravenclaw didn't appear to have heard a word he was saying.

"It won't stop..." Lovell whispered, his voice cracking. He held out both hands towards Snape as if clutching at him, the boxes in his arms fallen unheeded at his feet. "I went up to the common room to get these—" he was wearing what might once have been patterned gloves— "but the blood just soaks through and through, and it won't stop..."

Snape caught him by the forearm and stripped off one sticky, sodden glove, ignoring the boy's attempt at protest. The cuts and scrapes underneath were no more serious than when he had last seen them. But they were still oozing a thin film of blood.

"Some kind of anti-coagulant, obviously," he observed drily. "Possibly grounds for an interesting footnote in Whyte's Bestiary, but hardly life-threatening, Lovell. I would suggest you find a more responsive audience for your histrionics."

He let the boy's arm drop, wiping his fingers in distaste, and turned on his heel to leave the room. When he returned from the stores, a jar of salve in either hand, Magnus Lovell was still standing exactly as he had left him, the first hint of colour beginning to return to his face.

Snape propelled him by the collar towards a seat at the end of one of the long tables, dumping the jars down in front of him.

"Wound-Seal. Use it. And I want notes on the varying effects of the two different recipes."

The boy's mouth opened as he gave a helpless look down at his hands, and Snape forestalled the inevitable objection with a snarl. "**Mental** notes, Mr Lovell. I assume you do retain that facility behind the unassuming ear-ornament you are so modestly sporting?"

He swept back to his own seat without bothering to wait for an answer. In the blessed silence that followed, it was some time before he even recalled Lovell's existence to mind again.

* * *

A shower of dried palm leaves clattered to the floor as the edge of Snape's robes brushed against the discarded packaging. Snape stared down at the mess for a moment, mouth tightening, then turned suddenly and glared across the room.

"Strange as it may seem, Lovell, I understood that you were here to play the part of an assistant, not that of a decorative classroom feature. I can only assume there is some very good reason why you are sitting at your ease and twiddling your thumbs?"

The Ravenclaw student flushed. "I'm still waiting for this second batch of salve, sir. I don't think it's working, much."

Snape frowned and got to his feet, sending more wrappings cascading unheeded beneath the desks. One of those jars had been made to the standard recipe for the Wound-Seal Salve: the other had been the original trial batch of a faster-acting variant he'd begun experimenting with some three years ago. There had been no ill-effects that either he or Madam Pomfrey had ever been able to detect. It did, however, occur to him forcibly that one thing he had never considered was a possibility of the compound's becoming unstable with age.

The sudden dawning of hindsight had never been one of his favourite experiences.

A couple of strides took him round the end of the desks and along to Lovell, who was holding out the jar defensively as if he thought Snape wouldn't believe him. One sniff and taste were enough to confirm his suspicions. Degraded — almost beyond use. He'd have to warn Poppy to clear out her old stock.

His clenched jaw tightened further as a fresh thought occurred to him; he'd have to submit a cautionary addendum to the account of the new technique that had made it into publication in last year's British Philtre Journal, as well. And the boy was staring at him with an oh-so-innocent expression, as if he didn't understand why Snape should even **care**—

"Show me your hand. Both hands!" Snape's own bony wrists shot out as he yanked Lovell's hands towards him. The right hand was clean, bite-marks and scrapes dried up to thin lines against tanned skin. The left was still pink and swollen. Snape prodded one of the raised scratch-marks with a merciless touch, tightening his grip as the boy instinctively pulled away. The wound didn't — quite — split open.

"It'll do. Get to work." He thrust the boy towards the workbench, indicating the mess with a comprehensive sweep of the arm. "You can start by clearing that up."

Himself busy sweeping assorted potion ingredients into suitable containers, Snape kept an eagle eye on the boy; but while Magnus Lovell had never shone in Potions, he had been a reliable student, and he was making a competent job of it. Snape left him to it, and began assembling the rest of what he was going to need.

They worked in silence for a while, with barely a sound save the steady rustle of the boy's movements and the occasional brush of Snape's robes as the Potions master moved softly around the classroom like a shadow in a candle-flame, first reaching high then stooping low without warning. From the corner, almost hidden in the darkness save for one glinting eye, the _each uisge_ watched.

* * *

Snape set an alembic of isinglass down on the desktop with a rap that made his assistant look up in surprise.

"That's enough for tonight, Mr Lovell. I'll expect to see you here again after dinner tomorrow. Is that clear?"

Magnus Lovell nodded, looking for a moment as if he would have liked to ask a question. Snape eyed him coldly, and after a few seconds he subsided.

Reaching for a fresh scrap of parchment, Snape began to dip his quill; then stopped. The time had grown late enough to cause trouble if any student were to be found wandering the corridors of Hogwarts out of hours. But a permission note from Severus Snape might cause even more trouble, later, if things went badly. He had absolutely no intention of trusting Lovell to dispose of it.

He laid the pen down with decision. "Straighten your robes, Mr Lovell. I have business upstairs. I'll take you up to the common room myself." Correctly interpreting the young Ravenclaw's expression, Snape allowed his lip to curl unpleasantly. "Believe it or not, despite being Head of Slytherin I **am** sufficiently acquainted with your common room's location to do so..."

In fact, as it happened, the Ravenclaw common room was not a hundred miles removed from Argus Filch's office. And there had been the small matter of one item which he had discovered to be missing out of the delivery manifest. Given its nature and the earlier presence of Mrs Norris, he had a strong suspicion that Filch knew the answer.

He was right. Long practice enabled him to pick the reek of burnt ambergris out of the air before he even reached the caretaker's office on his way down from delivering Lovell — unseen and hence unquestioned — back into the tender care of Ravenclaw House.

Waiting for Filch's shuffling steps to answer his rap on the door, Snape occupied himself detecting the other ingredients of the potion Filch had been trying to brew, although he had already guessed its nature without a shadow of doubt. His mouth twisted a little in private amusement. He'd tried that one himself, when he was seventeen. It had taken nearly half a year for his hair to grow back in, let alone back to anything like a natural colour — and needless to say, the smooth glossy locks the tempting nostrum promised had never materialised. He'd suffered enough from ribaldry in that time to leave it severely alone ever since.

Judging by the smell of burnt potion, Filch hadn't even got that far. Unsurprising, since the caretaker was a Squib.

Contrary to many students' — and, he suspected, adult wizards' — belief, creating a successful potion required rather more magical power than mere Muggle chemistry. Without the necessary talent, mixing up Granny's old Love Philtre in the garden shed was more likely to poison the victim than render her receptive. Mediæval doctors had inadvertently proved this point beyond all reasonable doubt during the period when well-meaning wizards had attempted to introduce some of the minor Healing Potions into the Muggle world.

It hadn't stopped the Muggles hopefully boiling red-haired dogs and infusing worms in pigs'-marrow for several hundred years, though. Nor from continuing to kill off their sick with the useless results.

If the Ministry of Magic had any sense, they'd spend less time regulating cauldron thickness and far more in clamping down on unlicensed potion-making — and, most of all, on the quack firms that circulated sheets of Seven Easy Nostrums or Potions '89 for Dummies to encourage people like Filch to waste time and ingredients in trying.

He didn't **like** Filch. He didn't even, exactly, pity him. But the man had an uncanny nose for rule-breakers and miscreants that had proved extremely useful in the past, and a thoroughly laudable zeal for seeing them punished. Under the circumstances, Snape was able to ignore the Squib's conviction that enough experiment would enable him to unlock his powers, and was even able to extend a degree of tolerance to the abstraction of basic ingredients for yet another attempt at potion-concoction — tolerance that would have amazed those students who had run foul of Professor Snape's legendary watch over the contents of the Potions store cupboard.

None of that, however, implied liking. He stared down coldly at Filch's hunched figure as the door finally opened. The scent of burnt musk wafted pungently about them both, and Snape's nostrils twitched. "I think you know what I want, Filch."

Filch ducked his head in a sort of nod. "Just a few grains, Professor...it was just a few grains, and I was going to bring it over to your office special-like..."

Beyond him, in the centre of the cramped little room, a small cauldron was smouldering. Mrs Norris was watching it intently with large pale eyes, her whiskers quivering. Snape stalked in, uninvited, on the caretaker's heels, and stared around at the litter of parchments on every surface as Filch dug among them for the missing jar.

"You're wasting your time, Filch." He crumpled the nearest sheet — Goody Furbelow's Guaranteed Complexion Enhancer — and let it drop. "None of this dross is worth the sheepskin it's written on, even for a qualified wizard. And none of it is ever — **ever** — going to work without magic."

"Ah, but I thought of that, di'nt I?" Filch squinted at him, straightening up with the open jar in his hand. "I took what you told me to heart, Professor. Sent off for a course that'll set me right—"

If there was one thing Snape detested, it was Argus Filch's attempts to be ingratiating.

"No doubt." His tone did little to conceal his own opinion of such an eventuality. "And until that happy arrival, perhaps you could restrain your depredations upon my supplies. Thank you." He had removed the jar from the caretaker's grasp and stoppered it, in one swift movement.

In the doorway, he paused. "Incidentally, the effects of ambergris fumes can be particularly injurious to cats. I suggest you apply to the Headmaster for additional ventilation."

Filch's eyes had begun to bulge, and Snape allowed himself a small, unpleasant smile. "Good night."

It was less than welcome, therefore, to find that his own rooms had become suffused with a stale, ammoniacal reek in his absence. Not that the source was hard to find. Snape stared across the dungeon at the _each uisge_, a softly-moving shadow behind the bars. He could just discern the outline of pricked ears and one, sidelong, eye. The creature whickered, horse-like. It was watching him.

Thin lips tightening, Snape slammed the door and set a locking spell on it. He checked the other disused classrooms. Nothing there. Nothing in any of the main dungeons, or the corridors, or his own office. Nothing, save for the scent of damp and decay, and the faint clinging odour of stale water.

Lying awake, later that night, in the silent blackness that filled his bedchamber after the candle had been blown out, he could almost feel the air thickening around him. Sliding, slow and stagnant, beneath the door and past his wards like a ghostly roll of thunder in the hills, and pooling in the room. Lapping higher and higher along the walls, deadening movement, smothering all sound, rising silently across mouth and nose—

Snape shot bolt upright in bed, gasping, one hand sliding instinctively in search of his wand. For a second or two he was unsure even if he was awake.

"I've faced Voldemort," he said softly into the empty room between clenched teeth. "I've seen more Dark Arts than the years that have flowed through your river. I'll not play your mind-games."

He slid his hand out from underneath the bolster, holding his wand. "_Ventilare vegetus!_"

Snape held the wand straight out in the darkness for an instant; then brought it across in front of him in a steady line. And the night-breeze followed in its wake.

Cold and clean, like a draught of ice-water— He took a deep breath, feeling his head clear almost instantly, and let his wand fall, ending the charm. For the first time, in the moments that followed, he became aware of the beads of moisture that had gathered on his face.

But the air had changed. The thick, stagnant taste that had filled the room had been swept free. He let himself sink back slowly onto his pillow, alert in the dark; but he could detect nothing, save the faint leaf-mould tang that had always, for him, accompanied the Fresh-Air Charm.

And — he yawned and suddenly rolled over, sliding his wand back under the bolster as he did so — for the first time he felt as if he could rest. Whatever the sense of menace that had weighed upon him, it was gone, at least for tonight.

Five minutes later, there was nothing stirring in the dungeons at all.


	3. Shadows of the Past

**Ch.3 — Shadows of the Past**

"Professor Snape—"

The interruption came from the small, straw-haired boy in one of the front desks. It was a reedy but penetrating voice, and it had already been raised far too many times for Snape's liking. He had arbitrarily changed this morning's fourth-year Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw Potions class from a practical lesson to an exercise in theory in order to give himself time to think, and was not anticipating the ensuing pile of earnest compositions on '_The Use of the Bezoar in Muggle Persia_' with any degree of enjoyment at all.

A glare failed to quell the questioner, who was now bouncing up and down in his seat, one hand waving. "Professor Snape — Professor Snape, how do you spell 'becunia'?"

"In your case, Mr Benham—" Snape's lip curled— "I would suggest **very carefully**. Sit down!" He rose and directed a cold black stare out over the rest of the class, most of whom appeared suddenly to have discovered serious faults in their work, and to be bent studiously over their scrolls in an attempt to amend them. "Five points from Ravenclaw. Any further interruptions will lose ten points for that House."

Two long strides brought him down to hover ominously over the shoulder of a lanky boy who had just muttered "Typical!" under his breath. "I beg your pardon?" Snape enquired very softly.

"Nothing." It was mumbled into the desk. The Hufflepuff didn't meet his eyes. "Nothing, sir."

"Ten points from Hufflepuff for insolence." Snape turned on his heel, robes flaring, surveying the room in a manner which reduced it momentarily to complete silence. As he returned to his place at the front of the class, the soft scratching of quills broke out again, accompanied by adenoidal breathing supposedly indicative of intense intellectual effort. There was no further sound.

Snape, who had woken late and then found himself obliged to spend his entire preparation hour in performing repeated Fresh-Air Charms to clear the betraying traces of the _each uisge_ from the main part of the dungeon, eyed his class with immense dislike and closed his eyes briefly, trying to recapture his train of thought.

No-one knew, that was the trouble; no-one in any of the texts knew how the Unforgivable Curses actually worked. Those who used them cared nothing for scholarship and very little more for any abstract knowledge; those who might have made such things their study had been barred from research by the pusillanimous Dark Arts laws. There had been no study made of the effects of the curse on so much as a guinea-pig, far less upon the human brain.

Of course — a muscle twitched, high on Snape's cheek — of course, there had been a time when he'd had the raw materials for such a study literally spread out in front of him. When scores of Muggles and wizards had died under the effects of the Imperius Curse, leaping from buildings or flinging themselves under trains, their shattered skulls laid out like trophies at the Death Eaters' feet. A time when a younger Severus Snape had been seduced with undreamed-of freedom to carry out all the experiments that had been forbidden at Hogwarts, to nurture the talents they'd none of them been willing to acknowledge, to pay back every petty slight and self-righteous sneer—

A trickle of sweat slid down his temple.

And then, following the Death Eaters, gobbling forbidden knowledge from the remnants they left, like a bird bolting down the scraps from a stripped carcase, he'd come to Voldemort's own attention. To his **personal** attention.

Another bead of sweat clung...and slid free. And another.

His Dark Lord had been interested in his work; very interested. He'd had a taste of real power, with wizards three times his age hanging on his words, paying court to beg him to drop just a hint in his Master's ear on their behalf, eager to test as many poisons and potions and counter-philtres as he could give. More heady even than that had been praise from the Master himself.

Voldemort's favour had been a drug more intoxicating, more deadly, than any he could brew. A dangerous, exhilarating chasm to walk, between excruciation and dark ecstasy, as the inner circle schemed and vied one against the other to please their Dark Master's whim. Any day could bring a fatal slip: a word, a glance, a touch misplaced, that ran counter to Lord Voldemort's momentary desire. And yet nothing could equal those instants when the Master's presence washed over him like a burning aura, and that cold, cold voice spoke of talent, and of power, and of reward.

There were no curbs on his experiments now. No scroll forbidden; no substance prohibited, no test too inhumane. Prisoners were his for the asking, and his to dispose of — no need to ration his tests or calculate beforehand what the subject could bear. There were always more, as many and more than he could use; and if they begged and grovelled, if some of them were faces he had known and some had called him by name, then ascendancy was all the sweeter.

To roam with the Death Eaters across the land, laughing and killing and tormenting those who fled, borne along upon the wash of Voldemort's great wind, was a freedom beyond any he had ever known. He had done — Snape's hand clenched — he had done terrible things. In the name of knowledge, in the name of his own skill, he had plumbed the darkest abyss of magic and touched on sights that no man's sanity should be asked to bear. And his Master's laughter had followed him all the way.

* * *

The class shifted uneasily. The Potions master's sallow face had taken on an unhealthy greyish tint, and his breathing was fevered and harsh.

Ava Franklin, in the front row, traded a cautious glance with her friend in the next desk, indicating their teacher. "D'you think he's OK?" she pantomimed.

Edie took one look at Snape's expression and sought refuge in her scroll, turning one shoulder pointedly so that all her friend could glimpse was a curtain of hair hiding her face.

Ava stole another glance upwards and shivered. Edie had a point. Keeping your head down **definitely** seemed like a good idea...

* * *

Like all the others, Snape told himself bitterly, he'd thought he could _use_ Voldemort. Oh, not in so many words; not in so much as a coherent thought, let alone any kind of conscious intent — those foolish enough to nurse any such ambition had lasted less long than any, and died the most horribly, at the hands of a Lord who outmatched their feeble understanding by more than they could dream.

Far, far more than they could dream. Loyal Death-Eaters — fools and minions — they'd all modelled a Voldemort after their own image: petty tyrant, manipulator supreme, icon of greed or of lust or of sadistic hate. And their Master, caring nothing, had let them play their little games, each using the Dark Lord's name to gain what he wanted for himself.

Severus Snape had been blind as all the rest. He'd sought to drink at Voldemort, as at a fount of forbidden learning. He'd clung upon his master's coat-tails to wreak paltry revenge. He'd acknowledged no constraints ruling even his slightest whim. And he'd abased himself before the Dark Lord as the embodiment of all the power and knowledge he'd ever worked for, the only worthy recipient of everything he'd learned.

He couldn't remember when the young man he'd once been had begun to recognise the truth; when it had dawned on him that the Dark Lord's only pleasure in his experiments was in wastefulness and wanton pain. When he'd glimpsed the ravening mindless hunger that was his master's soul. When he'd understood that Voldemort's grasp would destroy **everything**; not just the roses and puppies and flowers of spring which mocked at his own ugliness and hate, but the stones and traditions and deep quiet places of the world itself, until the darkest woods were ashes and the scrolls of ages no more than tatters blowing in the wind. What Voldemort could not use — had no value. What had no value — would cease to exist.

And he himself, Severus Snape, and all that he knew and all that he had gained, would be no more than a mote dancing in the breath of the Dark Lord's empty maw, for just so long as it should please those jaws not to close. Nothing left. Nothing but hunger, and naked power, and despair.

He had run. Not to save what he could, for he had no hope, knowing the length of Voldemort's reach. Not in search of escape, for in Voldemort's victory there would be no place to hide. He had run without thinking and without any plan, on instinct alone — and instinct, by some strange twist of fate, had delivered him into the hands of a man he'd hated, and who'd had more than enough cause since, in the years that had passed, to hate him in turn. The Headmaster of Hogwarts: Albus Dumbledore.

"Severus." Dumbledore's tone had been mild, almost pleased: as if, Snape had thought since, he had somehow been expecting their meeting. "I take it you've left the Death Eaters? Dear me, you look dreadful. Do sit down."

He had given him one of the piercing blue stares Snape had disliked so much at school. "You won't be needing that wand, Mr Snape," he had said softly. "You need help; and we need all the help you can give."

Somehow, Snape's raised wand had been slipped from his grasp. Dumbledore's hand had enveloped his shoulder, pressing him gently but inexorably downwards into a high-backed chair. "My goodness, you're very thin. We'll have to do something about that..."

The inconsequential words rambled on unheeded as Dumbledore busied himself about the room, pulling up a footstool, dragging over another chair from behind the desk, and settling himself down at Snape's side with two large cups of cocoa from the saucepan he'd been stirring with the tip of his wand when the younger wizard had stumbled in.

"Cocoa," he explained cheerfully, thrusting the second mug into Snape's unresisting hand. "Just the thing after an overdose of Dark Magic, I find..." But all the while, those bright, bright eyes were watching him, not inconsequential and not senile at all; less burning than Voldemort's gaze yet somehow piercing even deeper.

"We need all the help you can give, Severus," Dumbledore had said again, very softly, leaning forward so that their hands almost met. "For you **can** give help..."

And his eyes had met the black depths of the other man's own and held them there, stripping away layer upon layer of self and laying it bare for them both to see. Accepting him, for what he was. For what he had done. For what he could do.

"You have a place here, Severus." The words were almost too soft to hear. "You can come back. It's not too late. It's never too late — for those with the courage to learn."

A faint chuckle. "And however biased you may have thought me at school, young Slytherin—" his eyes began to twinkle— "oh, we teachers get to hear these things, you know — I hope you'll grant at least that, as a Gryffindor, I'm qualified to judge courage when I see it." He had touched the young man quietly on the shoulder, and stood up.

"Besides," he added cheerfully a minute or two later, between mouthfuls of cocoa, "learning is the one thing I've never known you shirk." His eyes had begun to twinkle again at Snape's expression. "Drink up your cocoa, Severus. Trust me, it'll do you good."

'Trust me'... Snape's mouth twisted rather bitterly. It had been the theme of the next few years; but only Dumbledore had offered him absolute trust in return. It had been almost pleasant, for once, to be on the receiving end of that unquestioning defence from which Dumbledore's Gryffindors had so often benefited, in Hogwarts. Almost. If it had not been for the relentless suspicions and hostility of their other so-called allies, which had so often required it.

"No-one need face Voldemort alone," Dumbledore had promised him when he had woken screaming, those first few nights. "Listen, Severus. No-one — no-one here — need face him alone..."

But Snape had gone back, as they had both known he must. Back, to do the task that no-one but he could do, where none save one who bore the Dark Mark could go. Back into the inner councils of the Master he had betrayed.

"You have no idea, Alastor," Dumbledore had exploded finally on one occasion, "how much Severus is risking, every day, every hour he spends in there! You have no idea what just one slip in his cover could cost—"

"Much the same as it costs innocent men and women every day," the Auror growled, glaring at Snape. "Only it's a touch harder to trust that turncoat spy of yours when him and his Death Eater friends are riding out masked-up and none of us know which of the bodies to lay to his account."

"It's as well for **your** side," Snape cut in coldly, "that some of us can do what's expedient. I doubt your scruples would weigh very heavily with the Dark Lord..."

Alastor snorted. " 'Dark Lord', is it, now? You slip into that other rôle of yours very easily these days, Snape. Too easily, some might say."

Snape drew breath with a sudden hiss; but Dumbledore was before him, one hand gripping the Death Eater's arm hard enough to inflict a Dark Mark of his own.

"Severus." Only the one word. But it was enough.

"One slip out of that rôle at the wrong moment, Alastor," Dumbledore said softly in warning, "and we lose the best source of information on Voldemort's intentions that we have. The one advantage we have that he does not — a friend in the enemy's camp."

"Yeah — unless what you take for a 'friend' is a spy in your own camp." The Auror coughed, and fumbled for his hip-flask, pointedly ignoring the glitter of fury in Snape's eyes. "Once a traitor, always a traitor. You know what I say—"

"And you know what I say." Dumbledore's tone was uncharacteristically sharp, and his grasp bit into Snape's arm like a vice, compelling silence. "The only way to get trust is to give it. Distrust a man, and he'll live down to your expectations."

Alastor coughed again, and drank. "I know what I expect." But it was growled under his breath, and after a moment he turned, and stumped out.

Snape wrenched himself free, snarling. "I can fight my own battles, Dumbledore."

"Yes." Dumbledore had been smiling rather sadly. "Yes. That's what I'm afraid of. I need you both, you see."

* * *

And so he'd swallowed his pride. A vein was throbbing painfully, high up on Snape's temple.

And so he'd grovelled to both sides. Kissed the dust before the handful of holier-than-thou Aurors delegated to take his information, and abased himself at Voldemort's feet, fawning for favour, begging to be allowed close once more. And all the time, at the last, he'd been searching: searching for a place and a way to set up the triggers for Dumbledore's final spell. The spell that would trap Voldemort where he was weakest, in his vanity and his pride, and then spread outwards, fuelled by sacrifice, to shred away even immortality, undoing the Dark Lord as if he had never been. A spell, Dumbledore had explained calmly, that would also destroy the caster, powered by his life-force itself.

"Sacrifice — willing sacrifice — is the most powerful force of magic that we know." Dumbledore's voice had been as matter-of-fact as if he had been discussing the theory of Transfiguration. "More, it is the one thing against which Voldemort cannot defend. There is no doubt at all in my heart that it will work."

He sighed. "I shan't be aware of much beyond the first few moments, of course. But I hope I'll live long enough to witness a great evil pass from the world."

A smile, at Snape's expression. "I've lived a long time, Severus. When you reach my age, you'll find that death is not so fearful a prospect after all. If my last few hours can serve to rid the world of Voldemort, then I'm entirely content."

"And the trigger spell?" It had come out more harshly than Snape had intended, but Dumbledore had simply nodded, accepting.

"There will be some risk for the caster, yes, if things go badly. If I lose control." Blue eyes met black across the gulf of a lifetime. "That's why I won't order you, or any man, to take that risk, however slight."

He held up a hand as Snape began a sharp movement of protest. "But I will **ask**... Severus, we both know you're the only one with even a chance of getting in there. Will you do this for me?" He had scanned the younger man's face for a moment, as if searching for something unspoken. "Will you set the spell?"

"We don't have a choice. You know I must." Snape turned away from those eyes, impatiently.

"If it goes wrong, Voldemort is going to know almost instantly who set the spell that trapped him," he added over his shoulder after a moment. "Under those circumstances, I doubt that endangering my survival is likely to be much of a problem."

"No," Dumbledore said softly. "No, I don't suppose it would..."

There was a moment's silence. Snape swung round. "And if you do win?" he shot at the old wizard. "If you do win? Had you planned for anyone ever to know?"

Dumbledore blinked at him, briefly; then grinned, looking suddenly fifty years younger. "A true Slytherin question, Severus. Salazar would be proud of you. Yes, I have sounded out my plans with two or three of my intimates — all of whom," he added with a twinkle, "have been absolutely horrified — but on the whole, I rather thought I'd leave a letter. At the Ministry might be best; I'm not quite sure what effect the spell will have on my possessions."

He had smiled at Snape. "But I promise you this, Severus. For as long as Voldemort is remembered in the wizarding world, my name will be spoken in the same breath — as will yours." He'd walked over, touched Snape briefly on the arm.

"You'll need somewhere to go, when all this is over. If you can bring yourself to return, there will be a place for your talents at Hogwarts — I think I can make sure of that." He held up a hand in the familiar gesture, forestalling a refusal. "No need to decide now. We still have time..."

Time... Snape's mouth twisted savagely, now, remembering. Oh, indeed they'd had time. Months and months of it, wasted on trying to find some way, any way, to get under Voldemort's guard without arousing his suspicions. Carefully constructing the perfect set-up on which to risk the one throw that would win all. Setting up the vital triggers, step by step, in secret...while Voldemort's confidence grew, and day by day his burning eyes seared deeper into a certain Death Eater's heart, seeking out the betrayal he could not quite sense.

While **someone** in Dumbledore's camp, it became increasingly clear, was passing information to the Enemy; and while Snape risked his life every day, unseen, unthanked, just to send warning, that _someone_ had betrayed the biggest secret in his pitiful power and sent Voldemort down to Godric's Hollow, to brush aside a potential threat. And in so doing — Snape's breath was coming in great harsh gasps through clenched teeth — in so doing had destroyed not only the Master he claimed to serve, but everything for which he, Severus Snape, had spent a year and a half in hell.

Everything he'd risked, everything he'd suffered, and every insult he'd endured had all been rendered useless — pointless — in the course of one night. Because thanks to Sirius Black — thanks yet again in his life to the unthinking petty malice of Sirius Black — it had not been Dumbledore's great spell, in the end, that had brought Lord Voldemort down. All the glory that should have been Snape's, the recognition at last that he'd always deserved and that had finally been within his grasp, had gone, because Black had stepped in his way, to a **baby**. A howling, stinking, dribbling, helpless, useless **baby**—

* * *

The hoarse sound that had forced its way from Snape's throat was more akin to an animal cry than a groan. Someone was pulling at him, tugging his arm. A face full of cow-like concern, looming over his shoulder.

"Sir — Professor Snape — are you all right?"

"Get away from me." A ragged snarl that sent Ava Franklin stumbling back. Every student in the classroom was staring openly, their eyes unbearable. Curiosity — pity — glee—

"Get out." He took a deep breath and channelled it into icy control. "Out. All of you. Now. Out!"

"But sir—" Someone in the middle rows was holding up a scroll uncertainly, and Snape turned on him.

"I'll expect an extra six inches of essay from all of you to make up for the rest of the lesson. Ten points from any pupil, and that includes you, Mr Benham, who fails to hand it in on time. Do I make myself quite clear?"

He stalked over to the door, flung it wide, and hovered there, holding it open, like a bird of ill-omen, while Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws alike shuffled quills and books hastily into bags and ducked for the exit. Only when the last echoes of the fourth-years' feet had died away up the stairs did he permit himself to approach that other, locked door, and test the strength of the spells laid there.

Locked and warded, as he had left it. Snape's mouth thinned. No trace of the Dark Arts — nothing could have got through, nothing to have had such an effect—

Eyes narrowing suddenly, he stripped the spells back strand by strand, to the bare wood; but there was no resistance. No hidden trap. The door yielded to a single touch.

In the disused classroom beyond, everything was as it had been last night, with no sign that so much as a grain of dust had been stirred since he or the boy Lovell had left. Nothing out of the ordinary at all, save for the imprisoned shape of the _each uisge_ cringing from the light of his wand; and the faint, faint scent of stale water.

Snape dragged one sleeve of his robes roughly across his face, where a sheen of sweat still clung, and played the light all around the room, sending shadows fleeing up the walls. But he was already certain that he would find nothing. Nothing, but that accursed horse-thing, huddled there behind its bars like a starving cur...

He would **not** allow that creature to manipulate him. He would not allow anything to deflect him from the research he had sworn to McGonagall that he could achieve — and he'd been exploring an idea, back before he'd let himself be caught in memory's trap. Skulls — heads — brains — **minds**—

Snape's eyes glittered suddenly. All at once, he had a very good hunch as to which books in the Restricted Section, unpromising as they might seem, might just prove to hold exactly the information he was looking for.

* * *

_(**A/N**: This story was written back in 2004, long before The Prince's Tale ever existed; so yes, I'm afraid the backstory given here is now AU. The characterisation, to me at least, still rings very true.)_


	4. Student Unrest

**Ch.4 - Student Unrest**

"Here's that other volume of Adler you asked for, Professor." Madam Pince, with a deeply disapproving expression, thumped a cracked volume down to join the pile at Snape's elbow. Snape, immersed in blurred blackletter type barely two inches from his prominent nose, had given no sign of even acknowledging the librarian's presence; but the cloud of dust and shredded beetle-wings that rose as the covers hit the table proved impossible to ignore. He emerged suddenly from the pages of "Totem and Taboo", looking furious, then disappeared equally abruptly behind a curtain of lank hair in the throes of an uncontrollable sneeze. Even Madam Pince, despite her librarian's immunity to dusty tomes, caught her breath for a moment and had to blink several times before she could continue.

She poked at the spine with a bony finger. "Muggle binding," she observed darkly, as if this were the worst that could be said of any object, book or not. "Look at the state of it...and not even a hundred years old yet."

"I should be more interested," Snape said coldly, having produced a large greyish handkerchief from one sleeve and used it to mop streaming eyes, "to know where the volume I requested has been for the last-"

He glanced up at the clockface above the centre of the bay opposite, currently displaying a small owl in the act of stooping on a long tuft of grass, frowned, and looked again, more closely.

"...for the last **three hours**?"

His chair, thrust back hurriedly, caught on the table and almost spilled a large morocco-bound Viennese volume onto the floor. Madam Pince frowned and caught it.

"Your requested volume, Professor, had been mis-shelved some fifty years ago by my esteemed predecessor, under 'Harmonica'. Under the circumstances, I feel that to have located it at all-"

She turned, and huffed indignantly. Not only was Professor Snape, as usual, not listening, this time he was no longer even in the room.

* * *

The mixed crowd of fifth-year students milling outside the dungeon, O.W.L.s or no O.W.L.s, had clearly reached the optimistic stage of wondering if their teacher had been waylaid by an unexpected Venus Man-Trap or otherwise prevented from turning up for the lesson at all.

One group of Slytherins, hovering eagerly at the foot of the staircase with occasional backward glances, were all too evidently on the verge of abandoning any intention of attending Potions whatsoever. Their faces fell almost comically when they caught sight of their Head of House sweeping down the stairs.

Snape checked his pace for a moment at the sight of the little group. "Well, well. Anyone might be excused for thinking that young Tench had a compelling reason to wish to avoid today's Potions class..."

Tench, a hulking youth with close-cropped fair hair and hands like hams, was looking acutely uncomfortable. His four friends, eyes fixed on the flagstones at their feet, were attempting to shuffle back towards the main group without being too obvious. It was not a very convincing performance.

But curious Gryffindors were drifting up from the corridor below, clearly agog, and Snape had no intention of giving out the dressing-down his weakest student so richly deserved in their hearing. "I'll see you - and that disgraceful essay - after the lesson, Mr Tench," he said softly, with what might have passed for a smile, and glided past the little group of Slytherins without a backward glance.

It was not a good start to the afternoon; and having arrived for the class almost ten minutes late, he then had to waste further time in getting the restive students back under control. Several of the Gryffindors, cocky as ever, were attempting to finish a game of Parrel-Sticks they had started out in the corridor, under cover of unpacking their cauldrons. A selection of items of personal adornment were confiscated from those girls who had been unwise enough to pass them around in the belief that his back was momentarily turned.

And no less than three separate students claimed to have forgotten to replenish the dried cactus-berries in their potions-making kit over the summer, and had to sign for temporary supplies from the Stores. The level of suppressed commotion and discussion accompanying this last episode was such that Snape was left with no doubt at all as to the nefarious intent of the perpetrators; but since his utmost efforts were not enough to detect the nature of the planned dénouement, he was reduced to dishing out pre-emptive detentions with a liberal hand, left, right and centre.

As for his wretched fifth-year Slytherins...the only thing to be said in their favour was that they created no trouble, and even that was hardly to their credit. Even 'high spirits' of the Gryffindor variety would have been preferable to the lumpen faces sprinkled around the dungeon, displaying, as usual, neither interest nor aptitude for their subject. If this class had not already been specifically responsible for endangering Slytherin's performance in the House Championship and he had not been Head of House, he would have been bitterly tempted to strip ten points apiece from the lot of them.

As it was, he was barely in time to strike Adela Scrimshaw's hand away from her cauldron before the girl managed to ruin her entire brew with an elementary first-year mistake. "The secondary infusion should boil **clear** before the berries are added, Miss Scrimshaw." He controlled himself with an effort. "I'm sure you won't make such an error again..."

On the contrary, however, he told himself grimly, conducting an ominous prowl among two dozen murky-looking cauldrons, if there were no further catastrophes during the course of the lesson he would be extremely surprised. Not to speak of the fact that he was finding it increasingly difficult to ignore his having not, as yet, found time to take any meals since the previous night, a situation which did not go to improve either his concentration or his mood.

* * *

Augustin Tench was miserably conscious of being, as his indulgent father put it, 'a complete duffer in the brains department'; and the passion for Quidditch propped up with such care by the paternal purse was, he was only too well aware, regarded with an inexplicable ingratitude by his Head of House, of whose biting tongue he had been quite frankly in terror for years. It was therefore some time before it dawned on him that Snape's heart really didn't seem to be in the scathing lecture that the Potions master was reading him.

Admittedly, over the last four years, he'd already been subjected to just about everything uncomplimentary under the sun that could be said about his written work in particular and Potions work in general. But somehow that had never stopped Snape managing to come up with new ways to categorise his incompetence before.

Even Tench, however, couldn't help noticing that Snape kept losing track of his sentences, and glancing back into the depths of the dungeon as if he had something else on his mind.

"Umm, I could come back another time, maybe?" The suggestion was ingenuous. "I mean if you're busy, sir, that is..."

He trailed off, grand stratagem deserting him altogether, as his interrogator's full attention returned to him with a snap, and found himself blurting out: "Only it's House Quidditch practice in half an hour, and-"

"Ah yes." The black surface of Snape's eyes glittered for a moment, as if something had leapt within. "Quidditch. I believe it was a convenient wrist strain which affected your prowess in the practice last week, when you missed three goals in a row? And a cold in the head to which we were invited to ascribe your lamentable performance last summer, equalled only by your studies during the exam term? If the prospect of practising on a Malfoy broom rather than one of your dear father's providing has such an adverse effect on your concentration, Mr Tench, as Head of House it seems to me that Slytherin team might to their advantage do without your services for one afternoon. In fact-" he overrode an appalled protest from Tench- "improved prospects for your O.W.L.s might not be the only benefit if you were dropped from the team altogether..."

Tench stared up into Snape's widening smile, the unthinkable vision beginning to stretch out before him. After all that investment put into getting his son on the team, Father would be ready to have his guts for garters. Snape couldn't mean - he **wouldn't**-

"But the House-"

"I believe the House can more than survive the loss of your services as Chaser for one practice session," Snape said coldly. A gesture indicated the row of empty desks. "And perhaps you would care to spend that time producing a summary of today's work sufficient to demonstrate to me that your Quidditch pretensions are not, after all, interfering with the less well-funded aspects of your schooling?"

Grasping at this straw of hope, Tench nodded eagerly and bolted back to his seat, scrabbling for a clean quill. Maybe if he wrote very quickly-

"The **front** row." Snape's yellowish fingers beckoned, and Tench, swallowing, shuffled up to the desks immediately beneath the master's eye. He tried to wipe inky fingers, surreptitiously, on his robes, but only managed to smudge his page. Snape, who had taken up his own quill again, sent a line sputtering across under a rapidly-scribbled set of figures and stared at him in a manner that did not bode well for his future sporting prospects.

Gulping, Tench ducked his head, and began to do his level best by the blank parchment in a sprawling, laborious hand. A few feet above him, Snape's pen was scratching steadily across sheet after sheet of notes, phrases and numbers jotted at random across the page or linked with rings and jagged lines. He showed no disposition whatsoever to release his victim in time for the second half of the scheduled team practice.

Miserably, Tench prepared to struggle on.

* * *

"Professor Snape?"

The dungeon door, left ajar, creaked open slightly, and a dark head appeared around it, cautiously. "Professor? It's me, Lovell. You told me to come after Hall was over..."

Given that Professor Snape had spent much of the past hour since finally relenting towards the unhappy Tench regretting, with increasing force, his stubborn choice to cut Hall and spend the remaining time to bring his theories to the stage of practical experiment, this was possibly not the most tactful of introductions. Snape's mouth tightened.

"Stop hanging round the doorway, Lovell. Come here - take this-"

'This' was a long slip of parchment, almost filled with a list in cramped lettering. Lovell took it obediently, and shot him a puzzled look.

"I want everything on that list prepared - in order - and laid out." Snape's voice was soft. "From the top. You'll find everything you need in the other room, where we worked yesterday. Is that quite clear?"

The boy nodded, and disappeared, and Snape bent again to his calculations, frowning. It would have to be **either** speedwell **or** dragonwort; use both and you'd end up with a powerful euphoric side-effect, doubtless resulting in more and not less suggestibility when administered to the weak-willed. Use dragonwort, and you'd have to try newts'-brain instead of rats', or risk losing the whole thing when the mermaid's-foot fern went in. Use speedwell, and you'd need to raise the temperature for the second stage of boiling, at the risk of degrading the solution - unless you delayed clarification until the heart's-blood itself was added. And that, of course, had so many other implications as to make it an essentially independent problem on its own...

Taking a deep breath, he drew yet another sheet of parchment across the desk, and began jotting down a fresh set of variables, the demands of his tired, hungry body once again forgotten. Every ten minutes' extra preparation at this stage could save hours of wasted work; but there was only a certain amount of theoretical preparation that could be done. Beyond that, it was going to be a matter of instinct, and judgement, and taking risks. With McGonagall waiting impatiently for results, Snape had every intention of getting it right.

* * *

It was almost an hour later when Snape came softly into the other dungeon, and found Magnus Lovell over in the far corner, leaning against the bars of the enclosure and chirruping gently to the _each uisge_.

"And just what, Mr Lovell, do you think you're doing?" Snape's voice was deadly, and the boy sprang back from the bars, instinctive guilt flushing his face.

"Everything's finished, sir-" the words came out tumbling over each other- "except the fernseed and the other things that need to steep, I mean." He indicated with a gesture the long rows of substances which had been powdered, crushed, shredded, peeled, infused, stewed and even pickled, then laid out at the front of the room, in exact accordance with Snape's instructions.

"I just wondered if this poor creature had had any water since last night, that was all..."

"It's lack of water that's keeping it in there, you fool!" Gliding across the room like a stooping hawk, Snape caught the young Ravenclaw by the shoulder of his robes and yanked him away from the cage. "Once let an _each uisge_ touch water and you'll never keep it behind bars - and believe me, Mr Lovell, you don't want that to happen, you really don't."

The boy pulled free, staring at him. "But...you can't keep a creature locked up without water. Even in Azkaban-"

Snape's thin lips curled.

"There's no place for sentimentality in Potions. Had it never occurred to you how dragon heartstrings, or bull's-blood, or gruntle teeth are obtained?" He dropped his voice suddenly, to a low hiss, compelling Lovell's attention.

"Now listen to me: I'm going to spell this out just once for your benefit, as you seem to need the reminder. That creature-" a jerk of his chin, sideways, towards the enclosure- "is here for one purpose only, to provide fresh blood at a crucial moment. Until that moment arrives, the weaker it is the safer, for both of us, Mr Lovell, and for Hogsmeade and for the rest of the school and for all the country around!"

His voice had risen almost to a scream, and Lovell jerked back, a shocked expression spreading on the young face. Snape bared uneven teeth in a death's-head grin. "I do hope you understand, Lovell, for both our sakes. Because whatever it might try to make you think, that **thing** over there is not the shaggy little pony your auntie gave you to ride when you were eight years old. That is a vicious, carnivorous predator, older and larger and stronger than you have any idea."

With a sudden movement, he caught the boy by the forearm, holding it up so that the sleeve of his robes fell back, displaying the faint marks of healed scrapes and scratches on the hand and wrist held captive. "And if you've forgotten already what gave you **these**-" he traced one faint mark down the back of Lovell's wrist with the point of a fingernail- "then you might want to ask yourself what else an _each uisge_ can do to your mind that you don't understand."

He released the boy, thrusting him in the direction of the workbench.

"You don't pity it, you don't play with it and you don't pet it," Snape said softly, fixing his assistant with an unforgiving stare. "And I suggest you remember that... Now, get those cauldrons ready."

He kept a close eye on Lovell for a few moments as the boy moved, gaze downcast, to do as he was told. But the young Ravenclaw's head was bent closely over his work, and he showed no signs of glancing back. Satisfied, Snape swung round to take up his own place at the end of the long rows of equipment that had been prepared. He hesitated barely a second, hand outstretched over the jars, before making his selection. A few grains of ambergris were followed by a pinch of scarab powder, staining the clear infusion a deep ochre as it sifted into the flask.

Snape shook the solution slightly, swirling it around the glass, and set the flask aside on the bench, already reaching for the long strands of saffron to his right. The first test of the many, many that would be needed was underway.

It was some twenty minutes later that Snape, glancing again into the enclosure, caught sight of fresh fur and blood upon the glossy black muzzle, and remembered an earlier half-stifled squeak that had doubtless marked some unhappy rodent's demise. Possibly more than one; the _each uisge_ ran a long tongue along its chops, displaying an admirable array of teeth, and yawned in satisfaction.

So much for keeping the creature weak, Snape reflected bitterly. He said nothing, however, to Lovell. The realisation that the hunger pangs that had been so lately knotting his own belly had apparently also vanished was not a pleasant one, under the circumstances; and he was far from convinced that it was merely the sight of that grisly meal that had been responsible.

From the shadows, light gleamed back softly from a liquid eye. The _each uisge_ was watching in silence, as always.


	5. Resistance

Ch.5 — Resistance

"And then what?" Professor McGonagall said sharply. The last few stragglers from her Transfiguration class brushed past them in the doorway, glancing curiously; but she took no notice. "What else happened last night?"

Magnus Lovell, accosted unexpectedly in the corridor on his way back from his afternoon Arithmancy lesson, gave her a look almost as puzzled as those of her earlier class. "What else? Well, we worked — at least, after he'd done with telling me off for daring to talk to his pet pony, **I** did the work, heating up water, wiping out cauldrons, holding this and that, while Professor high-and-mighty Snape did his usual stir and sniff wonder chef act—"

Appalled, Magnus had dropped his bag and clamped both hands over his mouth instinctively, trying to stem the truculent flow. He hardly dared meet Professor McGonagall's eyes. "Professor, I didn't mean...I don't know what..."

But to his relief, Professor McGonagall's eyes were twinkling behind her glasses. "Oh, I think I've a pretty fair idea what, Lovell, and it'll wear off in a day or two at the latest. Professor Snape tested his potion on you, didn't he?"

Magnus nodded, mutely, barely trusting his own voice. "We brewed up three or four different versions—" he gained confidence — "and he tested them all. And then he told me to drink one, and made me stand over the other side of the room, and gave me orders. All sorts of silly things I was supposed to do, and half the time when I got it right he'd shout at me, and tell me to do something else. I did the best I could, honestly I did, but nothing I tried was good enough."

To his horror, Magnus found the hot tears he thought he'd finally outgrown prickling again at the back of his eyes, as they had not even under Snape's relentless humiliation. He swallowed, hard.

"Professor Snape was furious. He made me drink the other potions—" his mouth twisted in remembered revulsion — and then go through the whole thing all over again. And he kept saying," Magnus swallowed again, "horrible things. All the while. Horrible things..."

Professor McGonagall made a small movement, as if on the verge of reaching out, but checked herself. "And?" she prompted, very gently.

"And..." Magnus hesitated for a moment, flushing.

"I just couldn't take it any more. Something came over me, and I told him if he didn't like the way I did his silly tricks then that was too bad, because I wasn't going to waste any more time trying to get them right, and he could just put that in his cauldron and boil it. And stick in his own head while he was at it, because it didn't matter what he washed it in, it could only be an improvement—"

He broke off. Professor McGonagall, her head buried in her hands, had made a queer choking noise. It might have been a sob.

"Oh dear," she said, emerging after a moment, her voice unsteady. She removed her spectacles and mopped at her eyes. "And what did Professor Snape do then?"

Magnus shivered. "For a second he looked — well, you can guess how he looked." Joseph Lovell, his father's adored elder brother, had been burnt to death by supporters of He Who Must Not Be Named, using the Immolation Curse, when Magnus was only a child. He could still remember the night they'd brought the news, the first and last night he'd ever seen his father cry... In those instants facing Snape, still numb from the unbelievable things he'd just heard himself say, he'd seen the black murder in the other man's eyes; and known suddenly that hate like that must have been what Uncle Joseph had seen, in those last endless moments as they burned him alive.

He'd been too scared to cry out, let alone to run. But then—

"Then he got this really weird look," Magnus said slowly. "He told me he'd have me expelled, and I said I didn't care, and he — I think he looked **pleased**..." He shivered again, remembering that queer look of satisfaction, and ambition, and pitiless interest, as if he'd been held up in a jar for inspection like one of those specimens in Snape's office...and yet somewhere, he'd swear, in the whole unreadable mixture, there'd been approval and even a touch of respect.

"Yes, he would look pleased," Professor McGonagall said, smiling as Magnus jumped at the sound of her voice. "It's all right, Lovell. You reacted exactly as Professor Snape wanted. I don't suppose that potion would have been enough to let you throw off the Imperius Curse—" Magnus flushed, wondering if the story of his last week's disastrous Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson had been circulating around the entire staff room — "but it strengthened your will enough to allow you to defy authority, perhaps for the first time in your life."

She smiled at him again, her rather severe face betraying a hint of affection. "I've no fault to find with your work, Magnus, you're an excellent student. But if there's one thing I've always said to Professor Flitwick, it's that you're almost too sweet-tempered for your own good. If you of all people found the will to stand up to Snape — not that I advise a repeat performance," she added hastily, clearing her throat— "then a true Free-will Potion is a possibility. A definite possibility."

She looked excited. Magnus, putting two and two together, supposed he probably ought to be feeling excited too. It was just that right now, the idea of being anywhere **near** a Snape who was playing around with the Imperius Curse gave him a sinking feeling as if a broomstick had dropped out from under him. "Does that mean...he's going to want me back after all? Tonight?"

The words spilled out as a goat-like bleat of dismay before he could stop them, and Professor McGonagall gave him a sharp look. "You mean he's said nothing? You've not seen him at all today?"

"Not since he told me to get out and get back up to the Ravenloft at ten o'clock last night..." Magnus said, feeling the words spill out of his mouth with a sort of astonishment at his own daring. "Why — is something wrong?"

"No," Professor McGonagall said quickly. But she was frowning. "Nothing at all. It's just— I'd assumed—"

She sighed. "Professor Snape hasn't been to the staff room in two days, or the teachers' table at Hall, or eaten anything at all so far as I can make out. I've known him like this before, mind, when he's been working...but by all accounts I don't believe he's sleeping well either. This morning, now, he turned up half an hour late for the first lesson looking like death warmed over, and scared a class of first-years into fits. I had to restore a hundred and seventy points to Hufflepuff alone — and even by Severus' standards—"

The Deputy Headmistress broke off suddenly with a glance at Magnus. Two spots of colour had appeared high on her cheeks. "Well, that's neither here nor there, Mr Lovell. I'd assumed that the two of you at least would be talking, that was all. With Professor Snape not himself — and Dark Magic in question—"

She broke off again, looking worried. "When will you next see him?"

"Not before tonight — even assuming he does want me again." _And assuming I want to go back, that is_. But the rebellious thought didn't make it out. Magnus sighed. "I've got homework for my N.E.W.T.s, Professor — I can't spend all my free time down in the dungeons—"

"Of course not," Professor McGonagall agreed briskly, sounding for a moment much more like herself. "But after supper I want you to go and offer your assistance as normal, just as if nothing had happened. I'm sure there will be no awkwardness at all."

Magnus found himself wondering if even she believed that, or if she was trying to persuade herself as much as him; but he capitulated with a sigh. "Yes, Professor."

"Good boy." Professor McGonagall looked extremely relieved. "I know Severus likes to work alone...but just now I'd be much happier if I knew there was someone else down there with him."

She sighed. "And no doubt he'll be missing Hall again tonight. I've a good mind to have a plate sent down there from the kitchens, though I know well he'll call it 'interfering'..."

For a ghastly moment Magnus thought she was about to ask him to make certain that Professor Snape ate up his supper, but mercifully, if she'd had it in mind, she thought better of it.

"And you'll be sure to let me know how the work is coming along?" she said instead, laying a delaying hand on his sleeve.

"I think Professor Snape would be much happier if he was the one to tell you that himself," Magnus managed, with another little spurt of saving defiance.

Professor McGonagall's lips thinned, and she stared at him very hard from behind her glasses; but after a moment she relaxed. "I'm sorry, Lovell. You're quite right, and Professor Snape would not thank me for it. I'll see him myself this evening."

She shut the door to the Transfiguration classroom firmly behind her, but hesitated, looking back at Magnus before he had made it more than a few steps down the corridor. "You'll have guessed what we're working on, I suppose?"

"The Imperius Curse," Magnus said cautiously, watching her expression. "Resisting...the Imperius Curse—"

Professor McGonagall cut him off. "It might be best if you don't talk about it. Not unless you're asked."

"Even to Professor Dumbledore?" Magnus said involuntarily, and saw her face close down. For one wild moment he almost expected the Deputy Headmistress to say "Especially Professor Dumbledore"; but instead she simply frowned and said, rather sharply, "Naturally — if you're asked. I do hope you can see that the last thing we want is irresponsible rumours flying around the school — particularly after last year."

Magnus nodded. It must have been emphatic enough, evidently, because Professor McGonagall smiled in reassurance. "It **is** only rumours, so far, Lovell. If this works...we'll have a defence in reserve, that's all."

Suddenly brisk once more, she pulled herself to her full height and gathered her robes around her. "And now, young man, I for one have work to do."

A swift nod of farewell later, and she was gone, her footsteps tapping rapidly away into the echo along the corridor. Magnus followed, more slowly. Despite himself, he was thinking of Uncle Joseph's fate again, and remembering stories of things Dark wizards were said to have done with the Imperius Curse.

* * *

Judging by the tray and empty plate, Magnus Lovell decided that evening, Professor McGonagall had evidently fulfilled her threat of having Snape's meals sent down to him. It didn't seem to have improved the man's foul mood, though.

In the course of the last two hours Snape had managed to find fault with just about everything his assistant had done, whether under his direct instructions or not. For the first time in his life, it had occurred to Magnus to wonder, rebelliously, just how much difference it really made to have measured out five and a quarter drachms of powdered forkroot instead of five and a half, or sixteen grains of cobweb in place of fourteen. It wasn't Snape, after all, who was going to be affected if the fire burned for a few seconds less than the stipulated time before the cauldron was swung off the heat — somehow he really didn't see the Potions master administering experimental dosages to himself. And it wasn't as if Snape had any practical basis for the absurd precision of those figures, save for the endless sheets of notes he'd been scrawling over for days. Magnus stole a few moments away from his dutiful observation of the slow, viscid surface of the potion, now on the point of boiling, to slide a sidelong glance at the other man.

Snape was scowling yet again over his own cramped writing in the lamplight, looking as if he wanted to murder the parchment — possibly by stabbing it to death with the hooked blade of his own overlarge nose, judging by the way he was bringing it closer and closer to his face. Magnus couldn't help a grin at the thought. It was unfortunate that it was at this precise moment that the cauldron finally came to the boil.

Snape swung round on the instant, his stare taking in Magnus' hastily-fading grin and the all-too-obviously unattended cauldron and narrowing to a spear of pure ice.

"I suggest that you add the steeped speedwell **now**, Mr Lovell—" Magnus had begun to slide the dragonsmane mat under the base of the cauldron in an instinctive attempt to look busy— "**now**. And pray — if there is any Deity that will deign to listen to you — that it is not too late!"

The little four-lobed flowers certainly gave off a distinctly unpleasant smell, even by Potions standards, as they slid wetly over the rim of the flask and met the hot liquid. Magnus, leaning gingerly over the potion to see if it was clarifying or not, had to conjure a hasty Shielding Charm to ward off the fumes.

Snape, who had arrived at his elbow with his customary silent and unwelcome rapidity, was manipulating the dragonsmane diffusing mat between the cauldron and the flame, handling the scorching metal sides with a tight-lipped urgency that had to be costing him in burns, even through the callus-marks of long years of practice. His voice hissed through clenched teeth. "I have allowed you a great deal of leeway this evening, Mr Lovell, much against my inclination, because I am aware that your abnormal behaviour is resulting from observable side-effects of the potions to which you were exposed last night. I would remind you that my patience is far from infinite, and that you are treading very, very close to the limits of its extent."

He released the dragonsmane weave, which was starting to diffuse a gentle simmering heat into the cauldron above, where the liquid had begun to take on a deep, clear reddish hue.

"One more unforced error from you now could cost all the work that has been put into this project from the beginning," Snape said softly, staring down into the potion's depths as if Magnus, barely eight inches away, did not even exist. "There will be no second chances for anyone in this. But if you give me cause to lay that failure at **your** door — then believe me, Lovell, you will spend the rest of your time at Hogwarts wishing you had never been born." That last word was spat out like a dagger, the icy black of Snape's stare swinging suddenly upwards to pinion Magnus without warning, and despite himself the boy flinched.

But Snape had already turned on his heel and stalked off, back to his piles of research and his notes, a faint beading of sweat standing out on the unhealthy sheen of his skin. 'Looking like death warmed over': Magnus remembered Professor McGonagall's words with a jolt. And she'd hinted at Dark Magic. Professor Snape looked like a man who'd spent the last few days fighting off the Imperius curse — or fighting the worst part of himself.

All sorts of unpleasant thoughts were flooding through his mind, as if a tap somewhere outside had been turned suddenly on. Professor McGonagall's veiled warnings. Dark mutterings from his own father about the war years. The caged creature in the corner, uncleaned, unfed. The unwitting use he himself had been made of by Snape last night. The realisation, cold and uncomfortable, that **no-one from Ravenclaw knew he was here**—

"Don't be daft," Magnus told himself under his breath. The Deputy Headmistress had practically sent him down here herself, hadn't she? And nothing of that sort could be going on at Hogwarts anyway. It would be **stupid** — and, as years of students had discovered to their cost, the one fault Professor Snape had never been accused of was lack of intelligence.

Giving himself a firm mental shake, Magnus peered down into the cauldron and breathed a sigh of relief. By luck or by judgement, the last ingredients had evidently been added just in time.

The liquid now simmering gently on the diffused heat had cleared to a dark, almost crystalline red, like the deepest crimson silk. In the ray of light that he sent down into the depths from the end of his wand, as he'd been taught, translucent veils shifted like ghosts of draperies in the heat, promising secrets, hiding truths. Magnus caught his breath, remembering what, in the past few days, he had almost forgotten. He'd not only been good at Potions; he'd loved it, once.

That childhood glamour had worn off, some time during his second year, to be replaced by the patient reality of researching, measuring and testing. But it had never been quite lost, and classes in the dungeon had been the brighter for it.

Small thanks to Snape — the thought stole in for the first time, as if through a stranger's eyes, with a jolt. Small thanks to Professor Snape, who'd bullied and hectored them through the work with thinly-disguised contempt and the scantiest of praise. And all the while Magnus Lovell had kept his head down, obeyed without complaint, and been grateful for whatever scraps of commendation the master chose to toss his way, like a good, obedient little student...

Magnus flushed, trying to quash the image. But it had lodged itself in the corners of his mind like the insinuations of an anonymous letter.

"Sir, it's ready," he told Snape hastily, as if to disown the thought.

For a moment Snape gave no sign of having heard him; then he straightened up abruptly, letting the scroll he'd been studying snap shut, and nodded.

"All right, Lovell." The words were harsh. "You know what to do."

Magnus nodded in turn, with reluctance. Blood magic was one of the strongest forces there was, and even without Snape's notes he could guess at why this was necessary. He made his way slowly towards the barred enclosure, drawing his wand, and began to set the Controlling Charm that would keep the animal helpless on its last, short journey. It seemed to him that there was very little difference between what they were doing now, and the Dark Arts they were supposedly working to combat.

The _each uisge_ watched his movements with a bright, dark eye, pressing up against the bars and snorting softly against the surreptitious hand he had slipped down to fondle its nose. The black hide was sleek and glossy, like an otter's pelt.

He rubbed round its muzzle, feeling the ridges of teeth behind soft lips, and remembering his own nips and bites ruefully. But the creature no longer showed any signs of fear or resentment, and its gentle breath was warm against his fingers...

"Don't be such a fool." Snape's voice in his ear was icy cold, and Magnus sprang back without thinking, his hand cracking painfully against the bars. "Haven't you learned anything at all, Mr Lovell? Or do you think you know it all where soft, sweet, lovable animals are concerned?"

For a moment they stared at each other like images in a distorting-mirror, two dark faces across an abyss; Magnus' still sun-browned from the summer, Snape's sallow skin faded to a yellowish underground pallor. Black gaze met black — and this year, for the first time, Magnus realised with a sort of queer shock, it was Snape who had to look up. It was hard to comprehend, even now, that the years had brought change — that he himself had grown taller, broader, stronger than the older man who had loomed over him in his mind's eye for so long.

"No, sir," he said quietly, backing off, still hugging the new perception to his breast like a tiny flame. He watched Snape unlocking the cage. "No, sir, I don't know it all."

Snape was removing the charms that sealed the gate, now, his back to Magnus. The _each uisge_ had shrunk away at his approach. Its ears were back, and it made as if to nip at Snape's wrist, only to be brought up short by the Controlling Charm.

Magnus held onto the leash of that magic, grimly, depriving the creature of even the most token defiance during the few seconds that Snape would need as he released the final binding charms. He couldn't seem to think very clearly. He couldn't seem to remember why Snape had been so adamant about what they were doing; all he could think of was the _each uisge_'s rolling, desperate eyes — and the sudden knowledge that at this instant, for these few moments, Snape's safety was entirely in his hands. He'd never thought of it that way before. But there was a strange pleasure in it — in holding the ultimate power over another human being.

He tested the limits of his magic, carefully, keeping his wand trained steadily on the side of the cage. He could feel weak power struggling against his as the creature fought, trying to balk as it was forced out of the enclosure. Snape's face was twisted unpleasantly in concentration, his lips constantly moving.

It would be so easy — the thought, slipping in from the edges of Magnus' awareness, was almost irresistible — so easy to let the Controlling Charm slip by just a fraction. Just enough to get one really good nip in on Snape... Nothing happened.

He took a couple of steps closer, unseen. Reaching out to touch a slick black neck as the ground seemed to recede, dream-like, far beneath him. Trying, all of a sudden, to clutch back the vestiges of his fractured Charm, as the first fringes of howling fear slid across his understanding — too little, too late — and the feeble fluttering power that had aroused such pity swelled up, and up, vast and hungry and **old**. Roaring free through the opening he had made, like a river in spate. Sweeping away all words and protections, shattering the Containment Curse that had held it pent.

The _each uisge_, a flame of crimson hatred flickering in its eyes, devoured the last fragments of his mind that still remained his own, its own jaw lolling slack in ghastly parody. In the next instant it had turned, razor-swift, upon Snape.


	6. Beyond the Barriers

**Ch.6 — Beyond the Barriers**

"Severus!"

Halfway down the stairs to the dungeons, Minerva McGonagall tried to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her, catching hold of her colleague's arm in an attempt to steady herself against him. For a moment it seemed the force of their collision had robbed Snape likewise of enough breath to keep them on their feet; then, as he staggered and thrust her off almost spasmodically, she caught sight of his face.

"That's blood." Her voice was sharp, and Snape managed the weary ghost of a snarl, grey lips contorting.

"Of course it's blood. Damn you, McGonagall, do you think I'd have run otherwise? The thing had me by the throat—" He broke off, as the colour began to ebb from Minerva's own face, and caught onto the stair-rail, dragging himself upright.

"It got Lovell." Bitter, unadorned truth. "It went after me for two solid days — drained all it could — and then it got Lovell."

"Oh dear God." Professor McGonagall caught hold of the rail herself, as her knees threatened to betray her. "Magnus. If I'd thought—"

She remembered the boy's parents with a sudden stab; the worn dark beauty of the mother, and the haunted hollows of the father's eyes. Dan Lovell had suffered more than enough already.

"Where is it? Where is…is he?"

Snape's lips twitched again, baring uneven teeth. "It's not what you think, Professor. Don't waste your time on pity. It took him willingly — it's riding his mind, using every spell he knows. The stupid, arrogant little boy—"

McGonagall gasped. "He's alive?" The sick wash of relief was almost more than she could bear. Not, after all, to be responsible for the death of a student. Not to have to break that news….

"Lovell alive?" Snape retorted. "Yes — if you call that 'alive' — and a danger to the whole school every minute he stays that way. With a human mind to channel its power, the only limits on the threat that creature can pose are those of Lovell's own knowledge—"

As she turned to run for Dumbledore, long fingers shot out to clutch at her robes, catching her off-balance, and she missed a step and almost fell. "Where are you going? What do you think you're doing?" Snape hissed.

Professor McGonagall's lips were pressed very firmly together as she reluctantly let his death-like grip drag her back down, grudging every wasted moment. "Severus, this has gone beyond the two of us now. Dumbledore needs to know, no matter what the consequences. I'll not shield myself at the cost of the death of a child—"

She wrenched suddenly at her robes, trying to free herself; but for all the ashen exhaustion in Snape's face, he was grasping onto her with the strength of a drowning man.

"Dark Magic work sanctioned in your name, against the express permission of the Headmaster? You think Dumbledore could — or would — cover up for us then, once the board of governors gets wind of it? Do you think there would be a place for either of us at this school, after that? You have a home, a family — I—"

He broke off, his face twisting, and took a fresh grip, dragging her close.

"We're in this together, Professor." It was the closest she had ever heard him come to a plea. "You and I can get Lovell out of there — deal with that creature ourselves before anyone need know."

He released her, abruptly. "Or you can go running upstairs to tell the world. Throw your future away — and mine. Is that what you want to do?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Minerva said sharply, without thinking. Her stare had deflated hundreds of students in their time, including a certain sullen adolescent Slytherin. It brought little more than a curled lip now, and her own hackles rose instinctively in response.

"You know I'd be only too glad to get out of this any way we can — and I've no intention of using you as the scapegoat, Severus, if that's what's eating your mind. But I'll not do it if it means any danger to the school; and I should never have let you have that boy, at all, if I'd thought there was any danger to him."

The memory of sending Magnus back down here, unhappy with it as he'd been, was still bitter in her throat. "And I all but warned him it was **you** who'd been affected — all but begged him to keep a close watch—"

"You did **what**?" Snape's eyes glittered in a sudden furious resentment. "You confirmed him in his own conceit. Encouraged him in flagrant disregard of every warning I gave. Laid him wide open to that mind-predator's wiles…."

"It was your own work did that." The flat words cut him off. "The Free-will Potion, Severus. And your own inimitable teaching style, I've little doubt."

Snape just stared at her, coldly, without a flicker.

"Your well-meaning concern—" He bit back the rest of that phrase with what was obviously an effort. There was a moment's silence.

"Everything I threw at the _each uisge_ was channelled back to the rider," Snape said finally, almost without inflection. "As long as there's a human trapped on its back, no curse you can try is going to touch it without killing the victim first. And no healing you can cast on the rider will take any effect until the creature itself is sated. From the moment he let that horse-thing into his mind, Lovell all but ceased to exist. He's a puppet now, nothing more than a human shell to channel the raw power into shapes the creature can use."

He took a breath, his mouth tightening further. "That thing trapped down there is in essence now the most powerful sixth-year wizard you'll ever face— but it **is** only a sixth-year wizard. Unless and until it reaches water, it's trapped within the limits of Lovell's knowledge — restricted by the spells that he knows."

Despite herself, McGonagall's eyes had been drawn against her will down into the shadows of the dungeon corridor below, straining for signs of movement in the dark. Snape, turning to glance over his own shoulder, allowed himself a bitter smile. "I sealed that door behind me with the most effective spell I know. No student in this school could break it — and, as witnessed by the fact that you and I are still standing here and still sane—" the smile twisted further as she shuddered— "neither, it seems, can the _each uisge_."

Raw black hunger in the darkness below, held back by the fragile fabric of Severus' infamous, intricate sealing spells. For a moment she could almost taste the life of the school above her, moist and warm and so very, very tempting….

"No!" she said sharply. "No—" An indrawn breath. "Maybe it can't get out, Severus. But it can reach us here. And sooner or later it will find a way—"

"Agreed." Snape's voice was grim. "We have to deal with it, and now. Before Lovell's mind is gone beyond recall."

"Dumbledore—"

"Dumbledore could do nothing, save get the boy killed too. Is that what you claim to want?" He didn't even bother to wait for a reply. "No amount of wand-waving will so much as scratch that creature while it has a rider to take the hurt — and no-one has ever dragged the rider from a living _each uisge_ and lasted to tell the tale."

**Catriona**…. But the long years had dulled that grief; and, to do him justice, she thought that this time at least Severus had not meant his words to wound. She would not see Magnus Lovell end as her sister had ended, though; would not let him become what Riona had become….

The clear brown waters of the burn had run through her nightmares for years, afterwards. She'd been a woman grown before she could hear the sound of rippling water and **not** remember.

"Water," Snape said softly into the silence, so apt to the mark that she caught her breath. "Water is the key. Water is its power. Let it once reach running water, and it will be free from all control; but strip the water from its body, and it will die…."

"As would you — or I — or any living thing." Her voice was sharp with disappointment. "Magnus would be the first to suffer; and I'll not permit—"

"_Anhydraserum_. Desiccating Potion. Through clothing, it blisters; on bare skin, it will burn; but on the flesh of an _each uisge_ it will kill, and kill before any human would take more than passing harm." Snape's eyes were glittering with anticipation. He looked across at her for a moment, his face framed in shadows.

"Ten minutes in my office is all I need. Ten minutes, with someone to guard my back…." From anyone else, it would have been an appeal.

Their eyes met. McGonagall nodded. It made sense — of a sort — and yet— Something was nagging at her. _Anhydraserum_? "You don't think…a simple Drying Charm?"

"I tried that." Flatly. One hand brushed at the blood that had smeared along his jaw. "With all due respect, Professor—" the tone belied the words— "we are wasting time. If you are still determined to damn us both in the eyes of the governors—"

"I think you misjudge them," Minerva said softly.

Snape's lip curled. "I judge the world as I find it, Professor McGonagall; and I find it lacking in charity."

_Small wonder, Severus..._ She sighed, watching his rigid back sweep down the stairs. At the mouth of the dark corridor below, he stopped, lit his wand, and glanced up.

She nodded, slowly, drawing her own wand in response to the unspoken question. "I'm coming."

* * *

The _each uisge_ almost got them both in the moment after Snape opened the door. It must have been waiting, she thought, in a cold moment of absolute clarity as the black jaws came down; waiting by the exit, when it found that strength alone would not serve. Or else — colder yet — waiting, not to get out, but for its victims to come **in**….

And then instinct took over, with reflexes she'd thought forgotten, and she had hurled a Skewering Hex at the crimson eyes as the towering stallion struck down at them, swamping the light like a thundercloud of malice and rage. She remembered Magnus, too late. The _each uisge_ didn't even falter.

Snape's voice, beside her, broke on the last word of a hissed spell. "**Jump**!"

Not understanding, she felt herself dragged forward in the last moment, as carrion-breath touched her face. Forwards and upwards, as Snape's fingers bit into her arm, and the Leaping Charm he'd flung over them took effect.

Upwards— For a second her robes tangled about her, and it seemed the low vaulting above would strike them in the face. And then they were down, with half the room between them and the monster, and aloft in another great bound as the magic ebbed. The second leap ended short, in a jarring landing.

Snape staggered for a moment, clutching at the edge of the desk to steady himself. He looked completely ashen now, with no reserves left. Across the dungeon, the _each uisge_ was just beginning to turn, cloven hooves raking. A stick-like figure lolled on its back. McGonagall flinched.

"Another hex like that, and you'll kill the boy." Snape's teeth were bared in the semblance of a snarl. "And without one mark on that slick black hide…."

His tone sharpened. The _each uisge_ had regained all four feet, ears back, head low and beginning to snake wickedly. "Barrier spells — which was your best?"

"Fire…." For an instant she hardly understood the question. Hunger was beating against her, black dark fury and need. It wanted to feed — but more than that, it wanted **revenge**. And she had ordered this thing brought to the school, in the hopes of staving off a worse evil—

"Fire," she said again, groping for meaning as Severus' voice stabbed at her, urgent now and rising. "Fire — I was always best at _fire_…."

"Then cast _fire_ and cast it now! Before—"

Darkness rushing towards her, as if in slow motion, like the shadow of leaping water upon the wall; like the breaking of a dam. Forty years or more, she remembered, since she'd last used the Barriers — since anyone had used the Barriers — since anyone had learned the Barriers….

Everything snapped back at once: understanding, memory, control. An old spell, a flawed spell — but a flaw so old that Magnus Lovell did not, could not know it. **And the ****_each uisge_**** could not use him to break through**—

"_Inferno!_" Her wand leaped with half-forgotten fire; and the flames roared up.

Something screamed, high and shrill and human. For a moment, heart twisting, she thought it was the boy. Then the creature screamed again, and she heard it for what it was.

Not human agony, but **fury**, pealing so high that the very heat of the flame-wall seemed to flicker. For an instant, eyes screwed tight against the white hot burning, she thought she saw the brightness dim, as if the shadow of dark water had seeped through the Barrier itself. But the element held; and the scream died away to a yammering howl, and at last to a low, bubbling menace.

She let out a long breath she didn't even remember taking, and gave her colleague a somewhat shaky smile. "Schoolgirl stuff; but it should gain us a breathing-space, at least." The _fire_-Barrier stretched from side to side of the room, lapping at the vaulting overhead in a wall of pure elemental force.

She remembered drilling at it even now, as a child in Defence Against the Dark Arts, with old Professor Ginevra rapping at her knuckles. "Wand _straight_, child — straight, I said—"

The Auror's first line of defence, supposedly. Wildly impressive, all but impervious to head-on assault — and quite, quite useless, once the attacker stopped trying to batter his way through by brute force and tried any of the modern charms. No-one had used the Barriers seriously in the field since the young Arithmancer Rejewski first demonstrated how to break them with ease, back in the days of Grindelwald.

Long before Snape's day, let alone Lovell's. She hoped, fervently, that poor Dan Lovell hadn't seen fit to take as much interest in the history of the Dark Arts as Severus' own unlamented parents.

"How long do you think— ?"

"Long enough, perhaps." Supporting himself against the edge of the desk, Snape had closed his eyes for a moment. Now he pulled himself to his feet. "Any sixth-year student at Hogwarts has half a dozen hexes that can break an Elemental Barrier, we both know that…. It's just a matter of time."

From beyond the wall, the low growl rose again. Snape stirred, slightly. "How long could you hold the spell?"

"Not indefinitely." Her voice was somewhat tart. "It's been many years, Severus…. An hour, maybe — before I collapse."

"We won't need that long." A sour curl of the lip. "And I very much doubt that we'll get it."

As did she. Minerva sighed, keeping her wand trained firmly on the protective wall. Behind her, she heard the sound of Snape's soft steps receding towards his office, followed by half-heard movements from inside. There was the muffled clank of a cauldron.

The empty room flickered, lit by the glow of the Barrier. Now, if ever, Minerva reflected ruefully, thinking of the doorway at her back, some of Severus' sealing spells would come in handy…. But she'd fought enough Dark Magic in her time to know that half a dungeon's width of clear ground was an advantage not to be lightly thrown away; and with spells of that nature she was not sure that Severus could any longer afford either the time or the power needed to set them.

Already, the centre of the flame had dimmed for a second time, sinking down almost halfway to the ground before regaining its force, as the _each uisge_ — easier to think of it so; easier to forget Lovell's voice, Lovell's hands — sent yet another fire-charm questing against the Barrier's heart. No screams of rage now. Only the murmur of magic beyond the wall, and the steady, increasing drain on her own strength.

"It's almost through already," Snape said softly at her elbow, returning. "Those aren't random charms. It knows **what** it's doing, and it knows **why**—"

There were smears of cobweb on the shoulder of his robes, and the vial in his hands was furred with dust, with dark glass beneath, where his touch had brushed it free. "Take this; it's the last of what I had in store. Not enough there to kill — but it might be enough to teach the creature a taste of fear."

He must have misinterpreted her expression. The harsh look on his face twisted a little further. "Oh, don't worry, Professor — it's quite legal, if that's what troubles your conscience. The Ministry permits a store of Anhydraserum for medical purposes…and as Madam Pomfrey will assure you, our Professor Sprout is a martyr to water on the knee."

He thrust the vial into her free hand and swung round, staring at the wavering Barrier. "I need more **time**." It was less a plea than a demand. "Potions can't be hurried — and this one's lethal enough without any added mistakes."

"I'll do my best," McGonagall told him tightly. The Barrier dimmed again, and began to fade, and her lips thinned further. "But we may not **have** time."

"Then make time!" Snape snapped over his shoulder — courtesy under stress had never been his strong point, she reminded herself through clenched teeth — before vanishing again in the direction of his office, and whatever obscure activities were involved in the preparation of Anhydraserum. Minerva McGonagall was not sure she wanted to know.

The vial between her fingers was cold as a breath from the grave. She had seen one like it before, a feather-light bubble of glass — in the instant before the Death Eater, Rosier, had flung it to shatter in Dan Lovell's eyes.

Laughing young Dan, who would never paint again. Who had never hurt a fly in his life, but had taken up his wand and gone after the Death Eaters who'd burned his brother alive; and come home to his wife and child on a conjured stretcher, with his eyes seared out in a mass of scars. While Rosier had escaped. It had been a waste — such a waste….

_"Teach him a taste of fear—"_ She knew, now, where she'd heard those words before. On the lips of the man who had been Severus Snape's closest crony at school. The man who'd used Desiccating Potion to cripple Magnus' own father.

Every Slytherin of that year had been lost to Voldemort; only one had ever returned. Snape had never spoken of it. But it was his information, later, that had brought down Rosier and the rest.

She would **not** lose another student to the Dark—

A sudden wrench, as the Barrier ebbed abruptly to nothing more than a heatwave shimmer in the air. Then died, as the counter-charm slid neatly in to cut it off.

Minerva's wand flew upwards as if a tether had snapped, and despite herself she gasped. It was like being slapped across the face with raw power. No sixth-year charm had any right to cut off a spell as brutally as that. She didn't even **dare** think how much strength that thing must have been leeching, these last few days — from Snape — from Lovell— She should never, never have taken the risk.

"Severus—" She flung up the _ice_-spell as the _each uisge_ slid forward between the desks, open jaws leering in mockery. An _ice_-Barrier wasn't going to hold it for more than a second or two, not now that it had worked out how to break the first.

"**Severus**!"

The crystalline wall of cold ended as abruptly as its predecessor, in a fading sparkle of ice-blue dust, and she bit her lip. If Severus were not ready **soon**—

She sent out a shower of urgent hexes that should at least have slowed the creature down. High on its back, the puppet-figure of the boy jerked and shuddered as every spell struck home; but the _each uisge_'s own limbs never even faltered. It flowed forward with predator's grace and a terrible, blurring speed that ate up the ground between them, and there was nothing, nothing she could throw at it.

Kill Lovell now, for the sake of the school — even if she could bring herself to do it — and in the next moment the creature would take her or Snape. Either would be enough. Even the Unspeakables couldn't stand against a water-horse riding a fully trained wizard's mind.

She raised her wand, with a dry sob of breath. Bring down the roof — bury them all—

And then the boy's dead black eyes were staring down onto her out of the past. It was Catriona reaching out, Catriona on the creature's back, the mirthless hungry grin distorting her sister's face….

Only a tiny whimper broke from Professor McGonagall's throat as the _each uisge_ sank its first bite into her shoulder. It was the sound, not of pain, but of a small child's uncomprehending fear.


	7. Unhealed Wounds

**Ch.7 — Unhealed Wounds **

The worst of it had always been that Catriona should have known — **must** have known — what she was doing. She had been at Hogwarts three years already that summer; she was no longer a child but a young lady, with her hair up and her skirts down, and a new-found distaste for freckled cheeks and scratched arms that had never seemed to worry her before.

But for all her reluctance to join in their old romps, Riona was still the best companion her little sister had ever had. She could skip pebbles across the burn with two — three — four bounces. She could tell the most blood-curdling stories of ghosties at bed-time you ever heard, until Minerva was curled up in such pleasurable terror she would squeak if so much as a spider brushed her. She could stitch a whole miniature trousseau for Minerva's beloved, battered china-doll Jane, and set in ruffles along each hem with tiny doll-stitches more delicate than anything old Morag could manage, even for Mother's own clothes. She could play at Snap and Tell-Me and spillikins in the schoolroom, and then chess and even bridge downstairs with Uncle Jamie and the others in the evenings; when little girls were put to bed, and scolded by Morag when she caught them peeping through the bannisters.

Uncle Jamie was perhaps both the girls' favourite guest. Tall and bony, with bright blue eyes and sandy whiskers, he was Mother's youngest brother and still unmarried; he'd spent years out in Rhodesia, and could spin the most hair-raising yarns of cursed diamonds and Apparating elephants, but that summer he'd come back to stay with friends over at the big house by the loch, and came over to see Mother and the girls almost every day.

The picnic had been Uncle Jamie's idea. The moor had been Mother's. The walk along the burn, when the hamper was empty and the grown-ups were dozing in the shade, had been Minerva's own idea, and she'd tugged and pulled at Riona to come, until Uncle Jamie had opened an eye and told Catriona for pity's sake to take the child away, before their ears all expired of exhaustion. But he'd said it in that special joky way he had, and winked at Minerva when Mother couldn't see.

It **had** been very hot, though. They'd taken off their boots to paddle among the stones, and then gone on again, with the dry grass prickling Minerva's feet, and a persistent fly buzzing round her nose. She tried to huff it away, but it wouldn't go. Riona told her if she didn't look out she'd end up stuck with both eyes squinting at the end of her nose, so Minerva stuck out her tongue and ran ahead. And when she'd looked back, the horse had been there.

Not a big horse — not then. Just a sturdy little black beast that might have come from any crofter's barn, and the only thing odd about it was that it hadn't been there before. Minerva had been too little to know any better. But Catriona — Catriona had spent three years in Defence Against the Dark Arts. She **must** have known….

The horse lowered its head and snuffled against her pockets, like old Donald in the stables at home, and Riona laughed and rubbed its nose. "Sorry, old girl, no sugar today. Where did you learn that trick, then? I'll bet someone's out looking for you — daft old thing, you'll have them all worried."

"Mother says you shouldn't talk to strange horses — or dogs," Minerva said, standing on one foot and rubbing the other against her knee, where she'd got a thorn in it. Riona was carrying their boots; but she wasn't quite sure about going that close to a strange horse.

"Mother says little girls shouldn't stick their tongues out," Riona retorted, putting one arm across the horse's back and stroking its smooth black neck. The animal snorted and nudged her, ears pricked, and she leaned against it, rubbing her cheek in its mane.

"Anyway, this horse isn't going to bite me — are you, my lass?" She swung herself onto its back as nimbly as a boy. "She's just looking for someone to take her home…."

"Riona?" Minerva said as her sister's voice trailed away. She took a step closer. Riona was looking at her in a strange way. So was the horse. Riona looked…not there. The horse looked **hungry**.

"Riona?" Her voice rose. The horse seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and the sun had gone all cold and thin. "Riona, stop it, I'm scared!"

Her sister was still staring at her, but her eyes had gone a funny colour, as if all the white had disappeared, and the blue part was being swallowed up by the black. The horse licked its lips. It had a forked tongue, like a snake, and its teeth looked extraordinarily sharp.

Minerva's lip trembled. "**Mother**—" The wail turned into a scream as the fangs flashed out towards her, striking for the throat. She turned to run and slipped on the dry grass, coming crashing down just as those dreadful teeth clipped together, blood streaming from her shoulder. She hardly had enough breath left to cry with. "**Mama**!"

She could hear Uncle Jamie's voice shouting as she scrambled, sobbing, to her feet among raking hooves, and caught at Riona's arm as the creature swung round, towering over her. Riona was slumped on its neck, eyes blank, one hand trailing, and she didn't move when Minerva touched her.

Then the child was running, barefoot, over grass and heather, with nightmare on her heels, and it was just like a dream because no matter how fast she went the monster was coming faster, and she couldn't wake up—

She didn't know how she'd got to the top of the rocks. She thought she must have flown, because she didn't remember touching them at all. She wasn't big enough to have climbed that high, no matter **how** scared she was…but she was there, huddled on the grey stone with tears running down her face, and blood on her dress where her shoulder **hurt**. The bad horse was prowling round and round, trying to scramble up; but its hooves couldn't hold on, and it was hissing and snapping at her and making a horrible bubbling noise in its throat. It didn't move like a horse. It didn't even look much like a horse any more. She didn't understand how Riona could ever have made such a terrible mistake….

And then she screamed. Because Riona had sat up on the creature's back, like some kind of doll. Her eyes were all blank and her teeth were showing just the same way the creature's teeth were showing, in a sort of laugh that wasn't funny at all, but more as if it was starving and going to bite you, and she was pulling out her wand. One by one, she was pointing at the stones that were keeping Minerva up out of reach, and they were starting to go soft and squishy like butter in the sun, and slip downwards. Minerva tried to scramble higher, but there wasn't any higher for her to go. And all the time her sister was smiling that dreadful smile, with eyes like something dead, as she pulled down the rocks to let the monster feed.

* * *

"Minerva? Catriona?"

Uncle Jamie's long legs had carried him swiftly up the side of the burn. He had his wand drawn. Mother was at his heels, running almost as fast, the coils of her hair tumbling unheeded in great wisps down over her shoulders.

Minerva set up a desperate wail and Uncle Jamie swung round, catching sight of the rocks and the creature that snarled there. "Dear God, Mary—" he used Mother's name, as if they'd been alone together— "it's an _each uisge_—"

Mother cried out as the creature turned. "Riona!" It was almost a sob; but she had her wand out and aimed steadily, backing away now as she and Jamie tried to force the kelpie away from the water, away from the child….

"_Professor McGonagall—_"

It wasn't going to work, Minerva knew. In a moment the _each uisge_ was going to turn and bolt, knocking Mother to the ground.

"_ —Minerva McGonagall—_"

It was going to disappear into the stream as swiftly as raindrops from a summer shower, beyond the reach of any magic the kelpie-hunters would muster in the days to come.

"_ —Minerva—_"

And the last sight the seven-year-old child would ever have of her sister, endlessly replayed, would be of the gutted shell of a body, tossed like a rag, as the _each uisge_'s teeth ripped through its rider's soft belly and entrails before dragging her down to the watery hell that was its home….

"**_Minerva!_**"

Magic hit her, hard, across the face, jolting starved lungs into a great sobbing breath, and Professor McGonagall choked and flung out a hand as awareness came flooding back. She could barely even feel the fingers of the other hand where they clutched the vial. The movement wrenched the predator's jaws in the mangled wound in her shoulder just as the _each uisge_ shifted its grip, reaching for the throat, and the agony of it had her senses swimming again.

"Minerva—" The remorseless demand of Snape's voice dragged her back, even as it had penetrated her dream, and she caught a glimpse of him — finally — too late — framed in the doorway. His wand was aimed directly at her.

She shut her eyes. Better that way than to end like Catriona. _Severus, make it quick_….

But it was a Numbing Curse that struck her. Ragged at the edges with Snape's own exhaustion, it broke like a splash of ice-water, draining away all sensation in her shoulder — all pain— For a moment the release was so great that she gasped. Her mind had cleared as if by a charm.

Carrion breath was hot in her face as the vicious jaws slackened an instant before closing for the last time. Her wand arm hung numbly, useless fingers trailing. In her other hand, the glass of the tiny bottle was slick in her grasp. Now or never. One last chance. Minerva McGonagall brought the Desiccating Potion up in a clumsy overarm blow.

The vial flew free at the top of its arc, and shattered against the gleaming black neck, with a terrible sound like sizzling meat. The _each uisge_ screamed, rearing back, twisting, as a few drops of thick liquid oozed free, and Minerva, flung aside, almost fell. Despite everything, the sound of that agony made her feel sick.

She clawed for the doorway with numb hands, rolling free as the thrashing hooves came down. A black flicker in the shadows, as Snape's ungentle grasp helped drag her back to the doorway and a moment's safety. The fumes from the cauldron there made them both cough.

"It's ready." Snape's voice had ebbed to little more than a croak. He coughed again, his wand pointed at the hovering cauldron, which rose a little further, as if with an effort. Beyond them, the _each uisge_ was still writhing, biting at the seeping wound on its neck.

The potion had come to a wavering halt. Sweat was standing out on Snape's forehead, and Minerva set her teeth and struggled to aim her own wand at the cauldron. She could barely feel what she was doing. Blood had begun to soak her robes, and her hand was trembling despite everything she could do.

A ridiculous, hysterical laugh threatened to overwhelm her. Two trained wizards — and they were going to die because between them they couldn't even muster the strength to levitate a cauldron… _Light-headed_. A tiny, detached part of her mind was still analysing objectively. _Shock — blood-loss_—

"Too much blood." Snape was staring at her, grimly.

The cauldron fell as he glanced over his shoulder into the dungeon and pulled her closer, dragging aside what was left of the high collar of her robes. Breath hissed between his teeth at the sight. "Stand **still** — we haven't got long—"

_Entirely typical of dear Severus not to bother to mention "this is going to hurt"…._ Minerva's throat tightened as she recognised the first words of the Hot-Poker Hex and felt the instant heat of his raised wand. It should have been white-hot. But for this, the fading cherry-red glow was going to be more than enough…. And then it was all she could do not to cry out as the burning heat touched mangled flesh; despite the Numbing Curse, all she could do to stay on her feet. Her mouth watered, instinctively, at the scent of seared flesh, and that was very nearly the last straw.

Minerva McGonagall clung against the side of the cauldron, struggling for control, and saw the _each uisge_ coming towards them like a cresting wave, in the moment when hunger and fury finally overcame fear and blooming pain. Snape must have seen it too.

The metal quivered and stirred a little beneath her cheek, trying to lift, and she caught at the doorframe to drag herself to her feet, relieving him of that weight at least. But whatever dregs of power he'd had left earlier had been swallowed in the decision to risk that last hex. Snape's breath was coming in harsh gasps of effort, and the cauldron had barely risen enough to hover above the ground. It wasn't going to **work**—

Her own wand had slipped, useless, from limp fingers to roll beneath the cauldron's base. Instinctively she groped for it with her good hand in the seconds that remained to her; felt the potion lurch against her grasp…. She gasped in sudden understanding.

"Severus!"

A moment earlier, she'd thought she barely had the strength to stand. She got a firm grasp on the cauldron's weight and heaved.

Snape caught his breath in a sharp hiss, releasing his own grip, as the thick fluid slopped across the rim; but in the next instant he had dropped down beside her at the back of the cauldron, thin shoulders braced against hers and straining. The potion lifted, unsteadily.

"One — two—" His voice cracked as the _each uisge_ came through the doorway in a black cloud of magic. "**Three**—"

Minerva flung everything she had into that last effort, heedless of darkness or pain; felt the weight flying upwards in a great gout of liquid as the nightmare creature came back for the kill. Heard the screams, both boy and horse, as the Desiccating Potion splashed out in a tidal wave that broke over the _each uisge_'s power, boiling, burning, eating at glossy hide and unclean water alike….

Trying to drag them both back, she found herself on the ground, spatters of potion smoking on her robes as a great acrid cloud seemed to swell beyond the empty cauldron. Snape was struggling to his feet, one arm cradled at a weird angle, staggering **forward**— And then a limp shape was flying towards them out of the cloud, Snape silhouetted trying to break its fall, and she forced herself to her knees to brace him as the rag-doll limbs came down.

* * *

Lovell's lifeless body was heavier than Minerva McGonagall had ever imagined. Snape went down hard despite all she could do, the boy spreadeagled in his arms as they hit the ground, and for a moment neither moved. Behind them in the doorway, a formless heap lay near the overturned cauldron, a thin wisp of smoke still rising.

It had tried to shift shape at the last, she realised finally, swallowing. What was left…bore very little relation now to a horse of any kind. Or to any living thing. Even as she stared, the side of the mound fell in, with a little puff of dust.

Movement at her side, as Snape struggled for breath, thrusting Lovell's sprawling weight roughly towards her. Professor McGonagall caught the boy's head before it could hit the ground, dragging him free with her good arm so that his shoulders were cradled in her lap, and bent over the blistered body. Everywhere his robes had been touched by Anhydraserum, the skin beneath was reddened and peeling. Memories of Death Eater atrocities rose and were choked down.

Snape silently produced a handful of glass shards from inside his robes, and held out the largest in front of the boy's lips. Nothing happened.

And then, a long second later, the curved glass clouded over with Magnus' breath, and Minerva McGonagall found her eyes blurring with a sudden, unexpected rush of tears. She bent her head to hide them, holding the boy closer, and felt him stir.

"He'll live." Snape's voice, little more now than a harsh whisper, had lost none of its bitter edge. He tossed aside the remnants of glass, and reached out to tip the young Ravenclaw's head over to the side, thumbing one eyelid open. "He'll live."

He didn't look particularly enthused at the prospect. "I won't answer for how much is left of his mind. If he's lucky he'll remember nothing — which is more than he deserves. He was warned, and warned again; if justice were done, he'd spend the rest of his life raving…."

"If justice were done, few indeed of us would be where we are today," Professor McGonagall said sharply, setting Lovell down gently and climbing to her feet. She reached, automatically, for her wand to conjure a stretcher, swayed, and almost fell.

"You need to get that shoulder wound seen to," Snape observed, pulling himself to his own feet one-handed and stooping to pick up her wand. He passed it to her without a word.

"I can manage." Professor McGonagall's lips tightened. The Numbing Curse was wearing off. It took her four attempts to create a stretcher for Lovell, and another three to get him on it, with Snape's black gaze on her every step of the way, and by the end she didn't know whether to bite his head off or admit that he was right. Her teeth were clenched tightly together.

Poppy would take care of the young Ravenclaw without too many questions. The Matron never probed where students were concerned. But Minerva McGonagall was far from certain if Madam Pomfrey's discretion extended to cover one of her colleagues turning up with not only the marks where something had tried to tear out her throat, but where someone else had tried to stop her bleeding to death by using a Death Eater hex on her….

"Incidentally, Severus—" she had managed to get the stretcher drifting in more or less the right direction towards the door, despite a wand that had begun to feel as if it were made of lead— "just for my curiosity — where **did** you learn such…creative use of the Dark Arts? Not at Hogwarts, to my certain knowledge. And—"

She broke off. And — not, she was almost sure, among the followers of He Who Must Not Be Named. **That** was one master who had no interest in employing swords as ploughshares, or in saving lives among the acolytes he'd beguiled into his train. But she had never spoken of Severus' past. Every Slytherin of that year had been lost to Voldemort; one, at least, had returned to them. He was what he was…and what he had been was better left to rest in silence.

But the lines of exhaustion in Snape's face had twisted in what was almost amusement. "I believe you were — briefly — acquainted with my dear departed father?"

"Ah." It had slipped out before she could help it, and the corners of his mouth twitched wryly in response.

"Ah indeed. As you can imagine, running home crying with a grazed knee or a gryphon-bite wasn't really an option. We learned to improvise…with what was available."

And what had been available, to any child of Melegrus and Verilla's, had been above all the Dark Arts. By all accounts, that had been the least of it. A bitter taste was drying in her mouth. Few wizards had deserved their fate more richly than Melegrus Snape — and few could have been mourned less. She glanced back, at the closed face of the man's own son, and saw nothing there but sour memory; and something else.

Professor McGonagall frowned, remembering him leaning awkwardly to retrieve her wand. The way he held himself…. "Severus, what's wrong with your arm?"

For a moment she thought he would deny it; then something flickered behind the black eyes. Snape turned slightly, bringing both hands into the light, and shook back his sleeve. Both hand and forearm were mottled scarlet and white.

"Anhydraserum — when the cauldron spilled." He flexed and closed the fingers with a sharp hiss of breath, glancing a moment towards the dried mound that had once been an _each uisge_. "Now, if you would kindly deal with your own injuries, Professor, and leave me to salve mine…."

"Poppy should see that," Professor McGonagall said, and Snape cut her off.

"**No**. I can ma—" An echo of her own words, bitten short abruptly as they both heard it. He'd drawn his hands back into the shadow of his robes. "I'm more than capable of dealing with a simple burn. It isn't the first time I've been…careless." He didn't specify what he considered to be a lack of care; but somehow she didn't think he was referring to the handling of cauldrons. Their eyes met.

"After this fiasco," Snape said softly, taking bitter stock of the ruin that was all the _each uisge_'s onslaught had left of his research, "the last thing either of us is going to want is anything linking both our names to tonight."

And it wouldn't just be Poppy Pomfrey making the connection. There was a deep chill ebbing into her bones at the realisation, now, of just how close their private project had come to disaster; at the sheer blind arrogance of the risk they'd — she'd — taken.

"I can't let you go on," she said abruptly, yielding the point unspoken. "You know that. Even if the potion could be made—"

"Agreed." Snape jerked his head in unwilling assent and turned away, moving stiffly to set the room to rights. Professor McGonagall stared at his back for a minute, searching for the right words; but Lovell, behind her, moaned, stirring on the stretcher, and with a sigh she stooped down beside him.

The room swam alarmingly around her as she moved, in a brutal reminder of just how badly she'd been hurt. She put out one hand for support, blindly, and found the boy's arm. The young fingers curled and clung to hers. "Professor?…"

"Lie still, Lovell. I'll get you up to the hospital wing." Minerva McGonagall managed a fair approximation of her usual brisk tones around the sudden lump in her throat. For a moment, through dizzy eyes, it could have been her sister lying there, ashen-grey in a sprawl of dark hair. **Catriona**….

"You're very lucky to be alive, young man," she told him severely. "No, don't try to talk. I expect Madam Pomfrey will want to keep you in bed for a day or two. I'll come and see you in the morning."

She disentangled their fingers, giving his arm a final pat, and brought up her wand with an effort once more to guide the stretcher towards the door. She could still feel the imprint of the _each uisge_'s jaws in the grinding agony that had begun to envelop her shoulder; still hear the echo of Snape's desperation calling her back. But it was not the right moment. It never was, with Severus.

She looked back, once, from the doorway; caught only the brief flicker as he turned away into the shadows. _Dear God, man—_ for a moment she could have shaken him— _would it be so hard, just for once, to show some grace in the face of gratitude? To acknowledge at least that you saved my life?_

A sigh. Enough, perhaps, to know that she could trust him with her life. Too much to expect him to be gracious about it. He was what he was.

Professor McGonagall went wearily up the stairs, to a reckoning with Madam Pomfrey and blessed, pain-free sleep.


	8. Epilogue

**Ch.8 — End-game **

"Slytherin in possession… Chaser Augustin Tench crashing through towards the goal-posts, but here comes Gryffindor Chaser Johnson — she's going to tackle — oh, but Pucey has moved in for a really aggressive blocking play, and Madam Hooch is turning a blind eye — OUCH — Slytherin still in possession after that open foul—"

Even the blatantly biased commentary from Gryffindor student Lee Jordan couldn't change the facts of what was happening on the Quidditch pitch. After the humiliations of the previous year, Gryffindor versus Slytherin was always going to be a grudge match, and the Slytherin team had a lot to prove. Thanks to a complete set of new brooms, and a new and doubtless talented Seeker, they were engaged in wiping the ground with the Gryffindor team in no mean style.

"And Tench scores! Gryffindor Keeper Wood is looking pretty sick, and no wonder — Gryffindor have yet to make their mark on the game, and Slytherin are in the lead fifty points to zero—"

Despite everything, Snape allowed himself a smile. Quidditch, in his view, hardly ranked high on a list of productive pastimes; but the inter-house rivalry was intense, and Slytherin had traditionally excelled. If he had to sit out here as Head of House in incipient rain — a particularly cold and heavy drop went down the back of his neck at that moment, and he sketched out an impatient Shielding Charm — then it was a considerable satisfaction to be able to anticipate the triumphant looks Slytherin would be bestowing on the less-favoured Houses tomorrow.

"— and finally, gallant Gryffindor get possession!" A roar went up from the crowd, from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as well as from the Gryffindor supporters, and Snape's lip tightened. The Slytherins around him burst into angry boos and jeers in response as the Gryffindor Chaser Katie Bell swerved out from under the Slytherin team captain, Flint, and streaked off down the pitch with a Bludger in hot pursuit.

"Tench tries to tackle — Flint coming up fast from behind — but they're no match for talented Katie. Slytherin Keeper moving out now to protect the hoops — they've got her walled in — she can't score — YES! — what a pass, what a pass…. As fellow Chaser Angelina Johnson now has a clear run at goal — look out, Johnson — oh no…. Excellent swerve there to dodge the Bludger, but she's lost her chance at goal, and Slytherin Augustin Tench has fumbled the Quaffle — some brutal work by the Slytherin Beaters on that Bludger, Chaser Bell can't get through — where are the Weasley brothers for Gryffindor?"

Behind Snape, a tidal wave of shuffling announced itself. He turned, sharply. The Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, was making his way along the stand through the ever-increasing drizzle towards him.

"Slytherin lead, sixty points to zero," Jordan was announcing glumly in the distance, as Tench scored again and Dumbledore slid into the vacant place at Snape's left-hand side.

"Ah, Severus," Dumbledore said in mild greeting as the referee's whistle blew. He wiped droplets of rain from his half-moon glasses.

Snape, scowling, dutifully extended his Shielding Charm outwards to cover his neighbour. "And to what do we owe this honour, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore **never** deigned to watch the game from the Slytherin stands. If he was here now, it could only be because he wanted something from Snape…in full view of the rest of the school…. Snape wondered, sharply, if it was about the business with that cat of Filch's. The whole disgraceful affair had been a nine-days'-wonder, and the school was still talking of nothing else; and it had been clear as crystal, to Snape at least, that a certain cocky young Gryffindor had told them far less than he knew. Maybe the Headmaster had finally come to his senses—

"Ah yes." Dumbledore had taken his glasses off, and was polishing them. He looked up, bright eyes suddenly very intense without their bespectacled shield, and fixed a piercing gaze on Snape. "I was wondering if you recalled the outcome of a certain discussion among the governors at the beginning of term, Severus. About the potential return of Voldemort, and the possibility of a Free-will Potion…."

Snape kept his face schooled to a rigid mask with an effort as an icy shock of betrayal shot through him. If McGonagall had talked…even she wouldn't have been such a self-righteous fool…would she? He'd kept an eagle eye on the Ravenclaw Lovell in the weeks that had followed that botched night in the dungeons, but to all intents and purposes the boy appeared to remember little or nothing — less than surprising, given that the damned _each uisge_ had to have been working on the young oaf almost from the moment it had given up on Snape himself. If anything, Lovell had looked even quieter than usual, studying harder than ever.

No, it must have been McGonagall and that stiff-necked conscience of hers. She'd have been quick enough to claim the credit, he made no doubt, if between them they'd managed to pull off the coup of the century. With proper facilities — with proper safeguards — he was still convinced he would have been able to do it…. But instead Professor Prim-and-Proper had let something slip in Dumbledore's hearing, and an abyss he'd thought safely past was yawning again before his feet.

The Headmaster had refused permission for the research. He'd specifically forbidden the experiments on the grounds of risk — risks Snape had deliberately chosen to dismiss as mere scaremongering. That had almost cost a student his life. It had nearly cost Hogwarts the lives of its Potions master and Deputy Headmistress. If, afterwards, the water-horse, bloated with power, had run loose among the upper corridors of the school, hundreds of children could have died, horribly.

And the governors wouldn't care that it had been the weak-willed soft touch of a boy, Lovell, who'd been criminally stupid enough to let the mind-predator into his head, despite all warnings — to think he knew best. Oh no. It would be Snape, who'd had to pull the whole sorry mess together as usual, who'd had to risk his own skin to undo what Lovell had done, who would get the chop. And Dumbledore, who'd promised him a place at Hogwarts for as long as he needed it, who'd been the only one to offer him sanctuary from the jackals on both sides baying for his blood, would preside over the meeting with that saintly, faintly-pained look in his eyes, and toss his subordinate to the waiting jaws….

The rain was sheeting down harder now, enclosing them with slanting silver bars, and Dumbledore, beside him, had him pinned with that bright expectant stare that could draw a response out of the most stubborn silence. Snape could feel the cage drawing in around him. One slip — one admission— A muscle in his jaw twitched, his control threatening to crack, and he took a deep breath, forced his features into a mask of mild interest, and nodded.

"The possibility of a Free-will Potion? Yes, I looked into that. My field of interest, as I'm sure you'll understand…."

Dumbledore was nodding in return, eyes still locked with Snape's own in a twinkle that gave nothing away. But Snape could have sworn they had sharpened. "Go on, Severus."

"I was over-optimistic," Snape said smoothly, evading that gaze. Out on the pitch, the players were barely visible through the rain. All around them Slytherins were starting to fidget and complain. "I did the preliminary research, to see what would be involved. But the complications were enormous. I don't think any living wizard could do it, Headmaster. Back in the days of old Erasmus Montague, perhaps…."

Dumbledore was giving him a somewhat puzzled look, tinged with amusement. "Come, Severus, I thought you rated yourself higher than that. Only last winter you were telling me how hide-bound those old philtrists were, compared to modern scholarship—"

"Oh yes, their legend outranked their learning — and that's what you'd need to pull this off, a living legend," Snape snapped bitterly, deliberately burying his own reputation with every word. _Whatever you've heard, Dumbledore, it must have been mistaken. Nothing of that sort could have been going on at Hogwarts, you see; your humble Potions master never would have had the ability…._

Resentment had him by the throat, thickening his words until they almost choked him. But reluctance itself could only serve to carry more conviction. He knew how to play a part. He'd learned it in Dumbledore's own service, when his very life had hung upon dissimulation.

Despite himself, his face twisted as he set the last nail in the coffin. "A Free-will Potion is beyond my powers, Headmaster — now or ever."

"Are you sure?" Mild disappointment, baited to draw him oh-so-delicately into what had to be a trap. "After all, if you've already done—" _admitted,_ Snape thought, seething— "the preliminary work…."

"Quite enough work to tell me what I can and can't achieve!" And every ragged edge of fury in that was real.

Dumbledore sighed, looking suddenly weary. "A pity. Things have changed, and faster than I'd ever dreamed. Petrification is Dark Magic of the most advanced level, and with something — or someone — of that nature loose in the school…next time, it may be more than just a cat…."

As if to punctuate his words, a yell of dismay rose from the rain-soaked Quidditch stands beyond. Snape glanced round to see a blurred figure heading for the ground, a Gryffindor player obviously out of control in the distant haze of rain. It barely registered. The implications of Dumbledore's words were breaking over him in an icy wave, rewriting everything he'd thought he understood. The world gave a sickening lurch.

"You mean — you want—"

Dumbledore was settling his glasses back on his nose. He didn't look up. "I've changed my mind, Severus. Minerva McGonagall was right. Resisting the Imperius Curse is going to be more important than ever." The old wizard sighed again. "I was hoping to discuss—"

And then he was drowned out by the great tide of whistles and shouts rising all round the pitch, as first Gryffindor and then Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw rose to their feet. The Golden Snitch glinted from the mud.

Dumbledore himself had made a motion to rise, only to check himself in a perfunctory gesture towards the ominous silence spreading around him in the Slytherin stands, as the House that had dominated the entire match saw victory snatched suddenly from their rightful grasp. But the impulse of consideration was short-lived. The Gryffindor Seeker was still on the ground, and figures were starting to run out onto the pitch towards him.

Dumbledore got up hastily. "If you'll excuse me, Severus — I think—"

"Headmaster, the Free-will Potion—" Snape hardly knew what he was saying. The chasm had opened up, not in front of him but under what he'd thought was firm ground, and he was falling….

"Oh yes. I was going to give you permission to do that practical research you wanted, of course. But it's all academic now. A pity. I'd been rather counting on your talents…." And with that he was gone, thrusting his way through the stands down towards the Quidditch pitch with barely more than a brief distracted smile to spare for Snape as he tried in vain to detain him.

"Damn you," Snape whispered, watching the crowd beginning to form around the prone scarlet figure below. He was shaking. All around him, Slytherin supporters were ebbing away. "Damn you, Harry Potter…."


End file.
